


Meta and Analyses of Naruto

by yunyu



Category: Naruto
Genre: Analysis, Anti Naruto Ending, Character Analysis, Fix-It, Gen, Gender Issues, Headcanon, Meta, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Politics, Worldbuilding, anti boruto, anti-Orochimaru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2019-09-12 13:00:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 42
Words: 30,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16873359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yunyu/pseuds/yunyu
Summary: Mirroring Naruto meta from Tumblr in response to the rumblings of the Tumblr apocalypse.





	1. why don't you believe Naruto has a happy ending?

You seem like a reasonable Anti. I'm deadass curious as to why you don't like the Naruto ending. It was satisfactory in my book. I mean my OTP's aside, everything ended on a good note and all the characters ended up happy. Care to explain? Thanks.

[blackotaku97](http://blackotaku97.tumblr.com/)

Hi friend! You know you are suspiciously perfect with your timing, are you sure that you aren’t an account that I made during some kind of Fight Club-esque hallucination to ask me this question? Because I have really been wanting to answer this question!

Specifically, I was thinking about, why don’t I take the narrative’s word for it that the ninja world is peaceful, that the characters are happy with their relationships and the changes in the world, until an external threat (the ones seeking the chakra fruit) threaten this idyllic world?

1\. Naruto fails in its own narrative arcs. The biggest and most fundamental specific driving force of the series was Naruto’s reconciliation with Sasuke–this is what was driving the incarnations. How does the series always put this? Bring Sasuke back, bring Sasuke home. Does Sasuke come back, does he come home? Nope, despite what we’re told about them being reconciled, what we’re shown is that he immediately buggers off to see things with new eyes. Ok, cool, Sauce, have your two year “All By Myself” world tour, but then he comes home and stays home, right? Because bonds? Nooooope. Off he goes again. This is less than satisfying.

What’s really changed about the ninja world, other than that there’s no active wars? Children are still being trained to participate in active combat, and military technology is proceeding rapidly. Orochimaru is still doing involuntary medical experiments on children, just artificial ones this time. Konoha is turning a blind eye to this, why? Of all the karma houdinis in this series, Orochimaru has got to be the worst, because not only didn’t he even pretend to regret anything he’d done (and just tally in your head all the atrocities he’s committed), he didn’t even suggest that he was going to stop doing them. And in Naruto Gaiden 700.6, we learn that Orochimaru is repeatedly wiping Mitsuki’s memories until he takes the actions that Orochimaru wants him to take. It’s completely sick and twisted. **Orochimaru being free to continue his disgusting mindfuckery and genetic experimentation is the single worst moral failure of the post-699 Naruto world governments.**  I’m bolding that so the people in the back can hear it. It’s reprehensible. Where is the justice for all those dead children floating in tanks that we saw in the Yamato origin story? For all the hundreds of people who he manipulated into taking his curse mark, for the untold numbers he killed? If Kakashi, etc, allowed this to happen, it just doesn’t mesh with their reason or their morality as shown in the rest of the series. Basically Orochimaru has Plot Armour to protect him from the consequences for not only his past actions but his current ones. And that’s just lazy writing.

Lastly, we’re told that the characters are happy, but they don’t seem that satisfied. Now, I’m a mom of young children, so I give a little more leeway than perhaps some antis do to Naruto etc looking tired. I could have an IV of espresso hooked up to my arm and I’d still look like a zombie most of the time, I’m not going to criticize them for looking tired. But Naruto clearly hasn’t reformed the Hokage role at all; it’s still an inefficiently, pointlessly busy bureaucratic nightmare. Sasuke, as I already mentioned, _isn’t fucking there_ ; Sakura has to keep everything going on her own, and apparently hasn’t managed to pay off the mortgage yet–what the hell kind of greatest kunoichi of her generation can’t pay off her fucking mortage, what kind of economy is this.

With the exception of GQ cover model Kakashi, everyone in Kakashi’s generation (who are all in their forties) look like they’ve been hitting the ninja meth too hard. Despite Iruka saying in the light novel for Naruto’s wedding that he’s resolved to find someone and start his own family, over a decade later he’s still Forever Alone. Actually apparently exactly zero of the sensei generation have had any relationships or kids besides the one Kurenai had with Asuma. Goes without saying that Kurenai hasn’t been allowed to find someone new either. This strikes me more as lazy writing than as some kind of statement in favour of the asexual community.

Yamato, whose infinite tsukuyomi dream was to be accepted as a worthy successor to Kakashi? Haha, fuck you Yamato, instead you get to spend your years sitting outside the hideout of the man who kidnapped you, experimented on you, and left you to die.

As for the kids, the kids are not alright. Seems like Kishimoto is unable to conceive of writing an exciting manga series about well-adjusted kids who have good relationships with their parents. 

What it all ends up to is that I thought I was reading a ninja comic about the importance of bonds and making bonds and family and family of choice, and then in the ending everybody scatters away and disconnects. It’s unsatisfying, no matter how happy we’re told they are.

2\. Sometimes people then say “lol salty then why do u bother reading it”. Paradoxically, I probably have _more_  interest in Naruto fandom because the ending was shit than I would if it was great. It’s like I bought a cookbook that had a recipe that had amazing ingredients and was going perfectly, until I got to the last step and the last step was “pour into a bucket of raw sewage and allow to ferment for a week before consuming.”

If the last step of the recipe was satisfying, I’d probably be like “cool cool, that was great” and that would be that. Instead, here I am online saying “Heyyyyyy I want to make this recipe but not with that horrible last step, what are other people doing?” And then we discuss what awesome things we’re doing, and also sometimes commiserate with each other about how terrible the sewage ending was.

* * *

I hope that wall of text wasn’t too difficult and that I didn’t use the word “apparently” too much. Apparently, I really like that word.

I’m somewhat unusual I guess because I am an anti who either actively supports or is neutral to all the canon pairings except SasuSaku. Like, there are way bigger problems with the canon ending then who is boning whom. Seriously.

Also I had to delete a paragraph where I got off topic and started ranting about ninja demographic winter again. I HAVE STRONG FEELINGS ABOUT NINJA BIRTH RATES AND THE REALISM THEREOF.

 

 [#ask me about ninja birth rates](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/ask-me-about-ninja-birth-rates) [#that was already a tag](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/that-was-already-a-tag) [#i have strong feelings](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-have-strong-feelings)[#that was also already a tag](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/that-was-also-already-a-tag) [#ranty mcrantpants](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/ranty-mcrantpants) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#naruto gaiden](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-gaiden) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto)[#plot no jutsu](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/plot-no-jutsu) [#anti-orochimaru](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-orochimaru) [#anti-sasuke](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-sasuke) [#anti-sasusaku](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-sasusaku) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis)


	2. ninja world demographic collapse

  * I'm kinda interested in hearing about the birth rate subject you mentioned on the post about the manga! Would you mind explaining it?

Anonymous

**The tl;dr version: large casts with many many background characters are very difficult to pull off, especially if you already have to have a large cast for another reason, so many content creators get lazy and make things like classes, schools, platoons, number of romantic partners, next generations, etc, very small. This however creates a plot hole because we are explicitly shown that this is all there is, yet this is not enough people to maintain an economy, an army, the number of casualities, etc. Birth rate is only part of this lazy worldbuilding but it’s kind of glaringly obvious and usually easy to pin down because “what characters had kids and how many” is usually made explicit.**

There are many people in real life. Many, many people. Think about your own school, which was probably not the only school in your town, and how many people were in your class, which was not the only class in your school. If it was the only class in the only school in your town, then your town was probably super tiny and rural–ie, it was not _the only school in an entire country._

But. Just characterizing everyone from that class? Is difficult. You can’t possibly give them all facetime, and if you do, that means the plot drags. And then you have the teachers, the siblings of the protagonists, the friends of the siblings of the protagonists, etc etc etc. You are meeting new people all the fucking time in real life.

So a lot of content creators throw up their hands and say “fuck this shit,” and you get stuff like Hogwarts, which has a graduating class of 20, and Konoha Ninja Academy. Naruto’s part of a graduating class of 27 (most of whom don’t get named), of which only 9 become genin with him (Kakashi explicitly says that only 9 will become genin).

For an entire fucking country. Nine new ninja per year. Not all of whom even become chuunin, let alone jounin or ANBU.

People do their best trying to headcanon stuff like “maybe most people get homeschooled!” and “maybe there are other schools elsewhere in the country!” but, you know, in real life, you would then run into these homeschooled/other schooled people. In Naruto, we know that Root exists, but it doesn’t make sense that Root would have more people in it than in the actual ninja academy; if that was the case, then Danzo could have done his coup much earlier. And even if Root turned out, say, a hundred kids per year, that still isn’t enough to counteract the casualties we see in Naruto.

Now let’s take a closer look at the Rookie 9.

    * 100% of the Rookie 9 are children of at least one ninja according to the anime (AFAIK it’s unclear if the InoShikaCho wives, Kiba’s dad, Shino’s mom, and Hinata’s mom are ninja or not). So the previous generation had 18 parents of which at least 12 were ninja.
    * Kiba, Hinata, and Sasuke have a sibling; everyone else is an only child.
    * So we have 12 children from 18 people.
    * In issue 700, the Rookie 9, with the assistance of three non-rookie nine people for a total of 12 people, have produced six children.
    * The three non-rookie nine wives had six parents for a total of 24 people in the grandparents generation.
    * We’ve gone from 24 people to 6 people in just two generations.

Oh boy, that’s pretty bad huh? Well, it can’t be that bad for every generation right–

Oh hello picture of Kakashi’s class, featuring eleven named characters!

How many kids were born from this generation?

ONE. ONE KID.

Mirai is the ONLY child of the people in this class by the time those who have survived are all in their forties.

**Behold, ninja world demographic collapse in a nutshell.**

Does it get worse? Of course it gets worse. Japan has a total fertility rate of 1.41 (meaning that you would expect 100 women to produce 141 babies). This is significantly sub-replacement, and Japan (and other countries with this level of low birthrate) is already having issues with it despite having a low death rate (only 9.6 deaths per 1000 people).

We’re shown a ninja world that has a TFR among shinobi of like, .23, and yet people are dropping like flies. Just within Naruto, we’re explicitly told twice that Konoha’s forces are cut in half (after Konoha Crush, and after the first day of the Fourth World War), not to mention how ever many were lost to Kurama and Tobi, not to mention the Uchiha clan massacre, all the people lost on regular missions, and so on.

It’s completely unsustainable, it’s not realistic when compared to the birth rates of real world societies with high death rates, and it’s not even thematically consistent internally. You get this moving speech from Asuma that the king in shogi represents the unborn children of Fire, and you get told that the Will of Fire is all about protecting the next generation–philosophies that are consistent with a pronatal society and government. You would expect the ninja world to both culturally and through law promote giving birth and raising children, especially since they use child soldiers and thus many children don’t make it to the age of having kids. You have a society that is highly organized into clans and which has a whole lot of clan signalling, so you would expect, y’know, _increasing the clan_  to be a thing, like it is for basically all clans in real life.

Instead what we get is a lot of nameless, connectionless characters that we don’t care about popping up solely for the purpose of getting killed by the baddies. They didn’t come from anywhere, and when they die they disappear without anyone remembering them or being impacted by their departure.

It is lazy writing, ultimately.

[32 notes, 2 years ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/152060002653/im-kinda-interested-in-hearing-about-the-birth) [#where are all the baby ninjas](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/where-are-all-the-baby-ninjas) [#ask me about ninja birth rates](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/ask-me-about-ninja-birth-rates)[#ninja world demographic winter](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/ninja-world-demographic-winter) [#worldbuilding](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/worldbuilding) [#lazy writing](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/lazy-writing) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis)





	3. what if Itachi hadn't massacred the clan?

  * ## [Bouncyirwin Naruto Ask #9](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/152124940033/bouncyirwin-naruto-ask-9)

**9) If Itachi didn’t have to murder his clan, what do you think his future in Konoha would be like?**

Depends if we assume the massacre occurred at someone else’s hands or not. Assuming no massacre, and that Shisui had lived and Itachi didn’t awake Mangekyo, I think he would have had a dutiful, perhaps somewhat repressed but not unhappy life, killing people on command, marrying his clanswoman Izumi, producing an heir and a spare, perhaps becoming Hokage.

This may be an unpopular opinion but I think Itachi was the kind of person who is lead by events rather than who leads events. He had a moral compass that was pointing the right direction, but he had an appalling lack of judgment when it came to specific acts in pursuit of that direction.

I think he changed only after his death when he finally realized the magnitude of how he had fucked up Sasuke’s life in his attempt to save it. And look how fucking long that took him. Most people wouldn’t have tortured their little brother like he did in the first place, but I think by the time Sasuke abandoned the village for Orochimaru Itachi should have figured out that this whole “traumatize my kid brother into remaining loyal to Konoha and ritually purifying me of my blood guilt to our clan” thing was not working out as intended.

Itachi was terrifyingly effective at carrying out plans and terrifyingly terrible at determining the repercussions of those plans, in my opinion. He would have been a Hiruzen-style Hokage.

[21 notes, 2 years ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/152124940033/bouncyirwin-naruto-ask-9) [#unpopular opinion](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/unpopular-opinion) [#itachi](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/itachi) [#i actally like itachi](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-actally-like-itachi) [#uchiha clan](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/uchiha-clan) [#uchiha massacre](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/uchiha-massacre)[#sasuke](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/sasuke) [#turns out repeated mindrape is harmful to children](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/turns-out-repeated-mindrape-is-harmful-to-children)[#who could ever have expected such an outcome](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/who-could-ever-have-expected-such-an-outcome) [#konoha has 99 problems and uchihas are 98 of them](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/konoha-has-99-problems-and-uchihas-are-98-of-them)[#bouncyirwin](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/bouncyirwin) [#ask meme](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/ask-meme) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis)





	4. if Shino was gay who would he end up with + bonus muttering about Kishimoto's romantic phobia

  * ## [bouncyirwin Naruto ask meme #10](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/152237719143/bouncyirwin-naruto-ask-meme-10)

**10) If Shino was gay, who would he end up with and why?**

The worldbuilding in Naruto seems to heavily suggest a culture where the clans with hiden (clan secrets) and kekkei genkai practice clan endogamy (marrying within the clan). Clan endogamy is common in real world cultures that prioritize maintaining resources over forming alliances, and in a world where you literally pass down genetic weapons, clan endogamy as cultural norm makes a lot of sense. (Clan endogamy doesn’t mean that the clan _never_  marries outside the clan, just that clanmates are preferred partners.)

Hinata’s mother seems to have Byakugan, Ino’s mother lacks pupils, Chouji’s mother is heavy, and we’re explicitly told that Sasuke’s mother, and Itachi’s implied intended wife Izumi, were both born Uchiha.

Yet nobody in 700 is shown to have a clan endogamous marriage, nor is the prospect of one ever even suggested. That would be a fairly seismic shift if it were a real world society, but because this is the Naruto ending nobody seems to notice.

Naruto societal worldbuilding is generally a mess though. He uses the more angsty and inconvenient parts of clan-centric, highly warlike societies only when it suits him and drops them entirely when they don’t, plot holes be damned. So we get clan endogamy window dressing but we pretend like it wasn’t a thing.

Back to the Aburame specifically. We aren’t shown much about the Aburame at all. According to the Naruto wiki, we never see a single female Aburame. But we can assume that as the heir of the Aburame, if Naruto society was presented at all realistically (stop laughing), he would have a societal and clan expectation to marry and reproduce with a suitable partner, regardless of what else he got up to, more or less discreetly, on the side.

We get another layer on top of this, which is that the Aburame kekkei genkai involves being a host for insects. In the real world, that’s going to be a dealbreaker 98% of the time when it comes to actually having sex with someone. And Shino plays things very close to the chest. I don’t think he would ever approach someone first, and he wouldn’t give off signs of being interested, and he would go along with a clan-negotiated marriage.

I can’t think of any of the Naruto guys who would have that difficult combination of being highly unlikely to be grossed out by the bugs thing, be willing to make an approach on someone who is giving no signs of interest and is engaged/married, and would mesh with Shino’s personality. A lot of things would have to be altered to make it work, or you could have an OC, or possibly a romance with a male character within his clan.

If it’s the Kishimoto approach to ships instead:

Shino meets a guy who is an exterminator! Haha, it’s funny, because they’re natural rivals.

Oh no, they tripped and kissed?!?!?!?!

Exterminator-san is leaving the village but I’m sure we’ll see him again soon!

(We will never see him again.)

We get the Forever Alone Geordi LaForge seen in canon.

ta da! ~~Kishimoto romance~~

[22 notes, 2 years ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/152237719143/bouncyirwin-naruto-ask-meme-10) [#anthropology of the ninja world](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anthropology-of-the-ninja-world) [#shino](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/shino) [#aburame clan](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/aburame-clan) [#bouncyirwin](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/bouncyirwin)[#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#but overthinking is fun](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/but-overthinking-is-fun) [#ask memes](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/ask-memes)





	5. would Danzo actually be a fascist nightmare Hokage?

  * ## [bouncyirwin’s Naruto ask meme #11](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/152647452968/bouncyirwins-naruto-ask-meme-11)

**11) If Danzou became Hokage, how would life in Konoha be?**

Ok, up front I want to say that “Danzo is Hokage” has become fandom shorthand for “fascist dystopian nightmare AU” and I’m totally fine with that. I will probably use that fandom shorthand at some point myself. After all, unlike in the real world, fandom fascist dystopias are great for forcing people into situations where kisses happen.

Honestly I am not sure how different canon!Danzo would be as Hokage. Up until his death, he got most of what he wanted other than the actual Hokage title, after all. He got the Uchihas massacred; he got children from the various clans surrendered to him as tribute (and how completely fucked up is that?), he operated his Black Ops as he chose and probably would have continued to do so if not for coming up against Sasuke.

Basically canon!Danzo got to do most of the despicable things he wanted to do already. The biggest change would be that the regular academy would become like Root in terms of brainwashing. Most of the “for teh evilz” stuff he does in fanfiction just seems unnecessary and not according to his canon motivation: harsh elimination of threats to Konoha without mercy.

He’s often depicted in fandom as enacting various policies against kunoichi, from simple sexist demotion and restrictions all the way up to basically turning kunoichi into sex slaves. Those kind of what if dystopias make good fanfic AUs and like I said in the first paragraph, I don’t mind that fandom has latched onto Danzo Hokage as an opportunity to explore these kind of dark scenarios, but I don’t think it’s particularly in keeping with Danzo’s motivations in canon. I really can’t see him taking good soldiers off the job just because they’re women.

What I _could_  see is, not kunoichi, but civilian women suffering under Danzo: “comfort women”, concubinage to continue valuable bloodlines, etc. But I honestly think even that is a stretch.

tl;dr It would be worse than Hiruzen and Tsunade but not by as much as you might think.

[4 notes, 2 years ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/152647452968/bouncyirwins-naruto-ask-meme-11) [#tw: rape](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-rape) [#tw: sexual abuse](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-sexual-abuse) [#danzo](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/danzo) [#bouncyirwin](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/bouncyirwin) [#danzo is hokage au](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/danzo-is-hokage-au)[#but overthinking is fun](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/but-overthinking-is-fun) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#ninja world is sad world](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/ninja-world-is-sad-world)





	6. in defence of SaiIno

Ok so I understand why people don’t get SaiIno, But I strongly feel that Ino is one of the only people who can work with Sai and hopefully when the anime adapts Shikamaru Hiden it will do it justice.

Remember that Sai’s true, natural personality, whatever it would have been, was systematically “trained” out of him. Now “trained” here is a euphemism, we don’t know exactly what methods Danzo used, but what kind of method would you expect someone to use who is trying to turn children into perfectly obedient, emotionless killing machines? And the manga and anime hints that Sai _does_  feel, beneath it all, but he feels unable to reach it–and that he is not content with the way he is. He wants a _real smile_  in the infinite tsukuyomi.

So who better to understand and be able to help Sai grow as a person than someone who can literally get inside his head?

As for Ino, we know from the start that she fancies Sai’s looks, and there’s _nothing wrong with that_  and I can’t believe I have to say this on goddamn Tumblr but some people seem to feel that a female character expressing that she thinks a male character she doesn’t know is hot somehow proves she’s shallow. ON TUMBLR. In between posts of celebrities without shirts. But I digress. Sai shows no canon sexual attraction of any kind during Shippuden, but that doesn’t mean he’s naturally asexual because of the aforementioned Danzo training. (Trigger warning: I can totally imagine Danzo doing the kind of anti-homosexual electroshock torture or similar to try to eliminate all sexual response in ROOT operatives.) It doesn’t necessarily mean anything about his true sexuality.

Lastly, when else are you going to see a heterosexual couple where they both wear crop tops??? C’mon. The world needs this.

Reblogged from [naruconfessions](https://naruconfessions.tumblr.com/post/153397850103)

[353 notes, 2 years ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/153410273228/ok-so-i-understand-why-people-dont-get-saiino) [#crop top game too strong](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/crop-top-game-too-strong) [#saiino](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/saiino) [#pro-saiino](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/pro-saiino)[#inosai](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/inosai) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#but overthinking is fun](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/but-overthinking-is-fun) [#tw: torture](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-torture)


	7. remember when Naruto was about fighting fate? Neji would remember but he's dead!

  * I don't see the point of that destiny speech given by Naruto to Neji when he ended up becoming the child of prophecy destined to be a special snowflake. #JustKishimotoThings

Anonymous

Short answer: Kishimoto planned the story as he went. The tournament wasn’t his idea in the first place but was an editorial mandate. Even _while he was writing it_  he planned originally to have Shikamaru win the tournament. He threw in the kekkei genkai stuff in the Wave arc without any idea of how it would work or how powerful it would become.

So when he was writing the tournament arc, if he even had come up with the whole reincarnation thing for him and Sasuke as that point, I’m sure he was thinking of it as “these two have been destined to hate and destroy each other for generations but in this generation Naruto will fight fate and end the cycle.” But instead it ended up being that Naruto and Sasuke, in addition to the OP power potential they already possessed from the beginning of part one, are the reincarnations of not just ordinary humans but extraterrestrial deities AND physical descendants of these same deities. 

(I will pause here for you to sing “I’m My Own Grandpa” if you wish.)

So we get the scenario at the end of the story that it’s not about an underdog saddled with a curse turning that curse to good and fighting fate, as it seemed during the Neji fight, but rather the story of two individuals who are so overpowered by gifts of genetics, fate, etc, that they leave any amount of hard work and fate defying (eg 8 gates Guy) completely in the dust.

Luckily there’s fix-it fic to the rescue for all us who actually wanted to see the part one themes carried through to the end.

[20 notes, 2 years ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/153788072178/i-dont-see-the-point-of-that-destiny-speech-given) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#remember when naruto was about fighting fate?](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/remember-when-naruto-was-about-fighting-fate%3F)[#pepperidge farm remembers](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/pepperidge-farm-remembers) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#anti-kishimoto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-kishimoto) [#but overthinking is fun](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/but-overthinking-is-fun) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis)[#i still enjoy naruto tho](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-still-enjoy-naruto-tho) [#why i love fanfiction](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/why-i-love-fanfiction) [#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks)





	8. KakaRin thoughts with some KakaSaku comparisons

  * What are your thoughts on Kakarin? (Kakashi x Rin)

Anonymous

Well she died in canon before she got to the age where I really ship anybody tbh. For me I don’t really _ship_  anybody with Kakashi except Sakura, but KakaRin definitely isn’t a NOTP. She’s obviously a significant person in Kakashi’s past in canon, and an even more significant person in _Heart Under a Blade_. Like the rest of Team Minato, it’s interesting to compare and contrast her to her counterparts in the Sannin and Team 7.

Compared to Tsunade and Sakura, Rin is markedly more gentle and passive. Rin is accepting and loving of Obito right from the beginning; Sakura rejected Naruto until they were genin, at which point she slowly warms up to him until the Chuunin Exam arc where she loves and supports him as a friend 100%, even if she can be a rather mean friend at times and still rejects his romantic advances; Jiraiya’s relationship with Tsunade took way longer to warm up at all and broke down completely after Dan’s death due to both of their flaws, and was not completely mended when Jiraiya died.

As far as we know, Tsunade never had a romantic interest in Orochimaru, and her friendship with him seems to have been cordial but not that close. I don’t like Studio Pierrot’s interpretation that Sakura developed a crush on Sasuke their first year at the academy; for one thing, it actually cuts the heart out of the Ino and Sakura relationship. If they only just became friends and almost immediately stopped being friends because of a boy, that wasn’t much of a relationship, was it? Like, I have a kindergartener, and she will literally come home one day and say “Max called me a name. I hate him.” and the next day “Max made me this card. He’s my best friend.”

In contrast, my interpretation of the manga is that they became friends that first year, but didn’t develop crushes on Sasuke until a much more developmentally appropriate age, like 10 or 11. At that point, they have been best friends–possibly Sakura’s _only_  friend–for a few years. It’s a much more powerful breakdown.

With Rin, again, I think Studio Pierrot erred in its Kakashi episode; I don’t believe for one second that canon Obito as a boy EVER looked at Kakashi with stars in his eyes like that–just look at how they glare at each other in their first canonical meeting in the manga. There’s also a big plot hole in the manga itself with regards to the ages of Kakashi and his classmates. The databook and so on says that Kakashi and Obito are the same age, but how could that be? Kakashi, the genius, became a genin at 5 and a chuunin at 6, yet Obito, the dead last, idiot and loser of his year, entered the academy with him and participated in the same chuunin exams where Kakashi was promoted? It’s actually a fascinating plot hole because there’s basically no way to square the circle here. If you want to emphasize Kakashi’s extraordinary genius, you have to make Obito and Rin much older–but then it becomes really weird for Rin to have a crush on prepubescent 10 or 11 yo Kakashi when she’s 14 or 15–so you make them the same age–but then Kakashi isn’t special at all. No wonder Kishimoto basically decided “aw, fuck it”.

This is getting a little bit away from your original question, but basically whenever I think about KakaRin as a ship I’m reminded of that plot hole.

Anyway, while the thought of Kakashi with such a gentle person is intriguing, I honestly am not sure if Rin really has the spark and pushback to make a really good match for Kakashi. Although who knows how Rin would have developed if she had lived longer? Kakashi certainly changed a great deal (although he was always a shit disturber IMO).

[20 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/154712843813/what-are-your-thoughts-on-kakarin-kakashi-x-rin) [#kakarin](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/kakarin) [#team minato](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/team-minato) [#sannin](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/sannin) [#kakashi](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/kakashi) [#nohara rin](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/nohara-rin) [#kakasaku](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/kakasaku) [#team 7](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/team-7)[#plot holes](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/plot-holes) [#let's see if these tags make anyone mad](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/let%27s-see-if-these-tags-make-anyone-mad) [#it's a catch 22 sometimes](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/it%27s-a-catch-22-sometimes)[#you don't tag something you make people mad](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/you-don%27t-tag-something-you-make-people-mad) [#you tag it they get mad](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/you-tag-it-they-get-mad)[#i'm just going to tag what the post contains](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i%27m-just-going-to-tag-what-the-post-contains) [#*throws up hands*](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/%2Athrows-up-hands%2A) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis)[#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks) [#sakura](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/sakura) [#tsunade](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tsunade) [#jiratsu](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/jiratsu) [#obirin](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/obirin) [#studio pierrot](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/studio-pierrot) [#naruto filler](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-filler)




 


	9. why I don't like Shippuden's Kakashi childhood filler

  * Hi! If it isn't a problem, could you please direct me to the Kakashi-centric episodes? :) I never watched the anime beyond the chunin exam arc because Studio Pierrot fucking sucks, and I thought I was over Naruto, but I came across a kakasaku fanart the other day and here I am, careening right back to hell at 900 mph, help. ;-;

Anonymous

[Originally posted by fineillsignup](https://tmblr.co/Zxnx8g2D8n_KN)

THERE IS NO ESCAPE

I think you’re talking about [the ANBU arc](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fnaruto.wikia.com%2Fwiki%2FKakashi%27s_Anbu_Arc%3A_The_Shinobi_That_Lives_in_the_Darkness&t=OGRjMTI5ZjFkN2JmNGFmYjM3YjA1NWI1MTY4NDI5ZTc4M2NhNjUxYSxhRnoxODc2YQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AVtJW60Qz95fl8v8C5YCCgQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Ffineillsignup.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F154825461183%2Fhi-if-it-isnt-a-problem-could-you-please-direct&m=0)? It is filler, technically, but very well-done for the most part. There’s also Kakashi Gaiden which _is_  canon. A lot of Kakashi fans like the KAKASHI mini-episode of the “Childhood” filler arc that aired between the adaptation of 699 and the beginning of Sasuke Shinden, however, I don’t like it much at all. I think Obito in particular is horribly OOC (Obito in canon hates Kakashi from the moment they meet when Kakashi is five), and I honestly don’t think that it jibes well with Kakashi’s childhood post-Sakumo’s suicide generally.

I could see Kakashi going through a denial/numbness/depressed period after Sakumo’s suicide. But he’s just way too polite and genial here IMO. Kakashi was a little sassy hard-ass even before Sakumo died, openly contemptuous of both Guy and Obito. I can see him not reacting to peers, but I just can’t comprehend him thinking of them as friends at this point. Also I think the anime soft-pedals the shamefulness of Sakumo’s downfall. I don’t like that they gave Sakumo an ordinary grave–it also contradicts earlier filler, which shows Sakumo as having an unmarked grave outside the cemetary.

Honestly, it’s all of a piece with post-Naruto canon in a _bad_  way. Kakashi’s childhood in the manga is a heart-breaking example of the suffering caused by a dysfunctional culture, a culture where everyone is traumatized and everyone is raised by people who were traumatized; a culture that is dimly aware that something is terribly wrong, but can’t perceive what the cause is. Shinobi as tools, and a tool who dares to save other tools rather than complete the task viewed as a shameful failure. Suicide as a solution to lack of honour. Orphans left to fend for themselves. A well-intentioned Hokage who is a strong fighter but a weak-willed leader, unable to change anything, unable to stand up for what’s right and protect the most vulnerable. And child soldiers, seven year olds trained to murder without asking why.

In the filler? Where is all that societal criticism? Where is the sense that the shinobi system and the Naruto-world culture is broken and crying out for someone to fix it?

Nope. Hokage Naruto’s kids are taking throat-slitting lessons just like their parents and grandparents did, Mitsuki’s living alone and nobody thinks it’s worrying, Orochimaru’s genetically engineering a back-up kid in case Mitsuki doesn’t live up to his expectations, and who cares about the Hyuuga branch house slavery? Not post-699 canon. Maybe it’s still active? Does that matter? Look, they have computers and there’s aliens! We swear this is a happy ending! Because we said it is!

[32 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/154825461183/hi-if-it-isnt-a-problem-could-you-please-direct) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#kid kakashi](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/kid-kakashi) [#anthropology of the ninja world](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anthropology-of-the-ninja-world) [#shinobi system](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/shinobi-system)[#sakumo](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/sakumo) [#naruto filler](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-filler) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#naruto part one all the way](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-part-one-all-the-way)[#part one's questions deserved answers](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/part-one%27s-questions-deserved-answers)





	10. Naruto worldbuilding and darkness re: death tolls

  * @telluresmentis: Starting a new response to [your post ](http://telluresmentis.tumblr.com/post/155407516307/i-consider-the-topic-of-eugenics-in-naruto-a)here because Tumblr is honestly a very bad medium for conversations of this kind.

The topic is Naruto’s worldbuilding and its inconsistency in how it wants the reader to think about its dark elements.

First I want to say that I wasn’t meaning to contradict or attack what you wrote but rather to say that your only flaw was understatement.

> The problem with Naruto’s village system is that we don’t see much evidence that there are more ninja (as you’ve pointed out, there seems to be a remarkably fast demographic collapse) and from what we see of the Warring Clans era all the shinobi are significantly weaker (this might be biased because we mostly see Senju and Uchiha in the Warring Clans era). Now, you could say that the large numbers of non-clan shinobi that supposedly make up the main part of Konoha’s forces including ANBU etc are those, but they tend to get slaughtered in droves whenever anyone with a badass Kekkei Genkai shows up, only to be stopped by a main character who, even if they aren’t part of a clan, also aren’t procreating and passing on whatever abilities they may have.

On Reddit, “more characters should have died” is one of the most common complaints I see, but the problem isn’t that people don’t die in Naruto, the problem is that hardly anyone dies who means anything. I don’t just mean that the character doesn’t mean anything to the reader, I mean that there is barely any impact shown period, except for occasional times when it’s narratively convenient.

The big example I use, because it’s so egregious, is Konoha Crush. The narrative states that Konoha lost _half_  its shinobi to the Sand/Sound invasion. The whole reason the story brings this up is because, with the reduced number of shinobi, the experienced shinobi are all busy on missions, and therefore only Shikamaru, the new chuunin, and whoever he can scrounge up can go after Sasuke when he leaves, although the adult shinobi do eventually come to the rescue. I can suspend disbelief for the shortcomings of this, because I get that in this genre we want to see the kid characters Do Things. But the problem is that after the timeskip, there’s no longer any mention of Konoha being significantly weaker than they were before.

(It’s hilarious to imagine what might have happened in the timeskip if one cared about plugging some of these plot holes—since Suna launched the invasion in the first place because the Wind Daimyo wasn’t hiring Suna shinobi for missions, I modestly suggest that Gaara sand coffined the current Wind Daimyo out of existence and seized total control of the Land of Wind via a puppet Daimyo. And you know, since it’s Suna, it could be a _literal puppet._ )

Simply further upping the body count of Naruto won’t solve the problem that these critics are trying to get at, that it doesn’t “feel like a war”. The consequences of Asuma’s death on his loved ones were very well-portrayed–the problem is that there should have been much more of that for many more deaths. Surely in such a small (it’s a village!) and clan-based micro-society, the Konoha 11 lost beloved relatives in Konoha Crush? Neighbours? Classmates? Why not show any of that?

_Quality_  not _quantity_  is the issue when it comes to death toll in Naruto.

> You could actually give Sakura an interesting character arc here as well; as the only civilian-born of the Rookie 9…

Gonna have to stop you there because unfortunately Sakura’s parents are shinobi, making it the case that in the entirety of Naruto, **there is not a single shinobi with a known non-shinobi parent.** Not even a shinobi with one shinobi and one non-shinobi parent! The best we can do is “we don’t know who their parents are at all” or “well the mother might not have been a shinobi” (since a lot of times we know about the father but not the mother).

> Of course, that would have required Sakura to have personal growth and character conflict not based around male characters, and we can’t have that.

[Originally posted by cinematears](https://tmblr.co/Z9Evlk1ng0-Mz)

Oh Lord don’t I know it.

> I wasn’t saying that the show isn’t completely dark, just that it doesn’t seem like Kishimoto (or the majority of the fanbase) recognise that it’s written that way. Dark stuff happens, sure, but the narrative plays at claiming that the society can be better (hence Naruto’s driving question of whether peace can actually be achieved) while refusing to acknowledge the enormous sociological awfulness it’s actually depicting. I’m not sure whether this is because it’s for kids or because Kishimoto isn’t a great writer, and thus the inherent flaws of the Naruto ending that all the main characters are raising their children to be child soldiers is because the average shonen reader wants a power fantasy without the bad side (that being a child soldier is awful)

I think the problem is that Naruto wants to tug at readers’ heart strings with the bad side, yet ultimately doesn’t want them to connect the dots to who is responsible. It was bad enough when Naruto and Sasuke were left basically unloved and alone, deceived about what had happened to their families, given a bare minimum in financial support and basically no emotional support—you could say “well, Hiruzen Sarutobi means well, but he’s a weak leader and rather spineless, and he’s entrenched in a society that doesn’t perceive the harm, but Naruto DOES see it and when he becomes Hokage, he’s going to make things Right. Naruto is a bold visionary, the special kind of person who changes hearts and changes the world.”

Yet in Boruto, Naruto is depicted as essentially the same kind of Hokage as Hiruzen: strong in power, but no vision for change, totally uninterested in reforming the system, and in fact, actively hostile to innovations like the kote. And that’s a bitter pill to swallow.

[32 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/155414016003/telluresmentis-starting-a-new-response-to-your) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#worldbuilding](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/worldbuilding) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#boruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/boruto) [#lazy writing](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/lazy-writing)[#suspension of disbelief](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/suspension-of-disbelief) [#naruto part one all the way](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-part-one-all-the-way) [#part one's questions deserved answers](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/part-one%27s-questions-deserved-answers)[#i just want my beloved to be happy](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-just-want-my-beloved-to-be-happy) [#plot holes](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/plot-holes) [#plot no jutus](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/plot-no-jutus)





	11. Hiruzen's hypocrisy

  * So I’m working on the Kakashi’s Wish translation (the time travel comic) and there’s a part where Minato is quoting Hiruzen as saying that a Hokage has to consider every person in the village as his own family, which definitely comes from canon. I don’t believe canon ever calls Hiruzen out for his hypocrisy on this one, especially given that Boruto heavily relies on the theme of “Naruto the Hokage must put the village’s needs above his family’s wants”, but Hiruzen is such a hypocrite on this one.

Why do I say that? Because you can compare the treatment of Konohamaru, the Sandaime’s orphan grandson, to the other orphans in the series, and it’s not even close.

The reader first meets Konohamaru–who gets called “Honoured Grandson”–with his dedicated tutor Ebisu, who was in fact a tokubetsu jounin who specialized in teaching–in short, the person who Konoha considered to be _the best_  teacher in all of Konoha. Ebisu got assigned to Konohamaru when he was just starting out at the academy, to teach him one-on-one. And sure, Konohamaru showed talent, but certainly less than Sasuke did; and one could easily argue that if Ebisu was going to have one-on-one time with anyone, it ought to have been Naruto, who was so massively underperforming considering the potential of his heritage and his chakra pool.

So Konohamaru, the Third’s grandson, got _the best teacher in Konoha_  as his personal tutor, whereas other orphans didn’t get any tutor at all. Plus I will bet you a hundred thousand ryo that Konohamaru didn’t live alone, didn’t have to cook and clean for himself, and didn’t have to budget to be able to afford enough instant ramen to live.

“Everyone in Konoha is like my family”. Hiruzen could be such a great _character_  because he’s such a flawed _person_ , someone who 100% believes his own bullshit and who sincerely thinks he’s doing the right thing. His nickname of “the Professor” is too right because he’s honestly the worst of that kind of ivory tower stereotype that has these lofty ideals and believes in them so passionately but lacks the self-awareness to see how completely he’s failing these ideals in practice. He believes _so hard_  that he’s Kindly Grandpa Hokage, but so many of the worst tragedies of the series are directly traceable to his actions or inactions.

Naruto the series came _so close_  to giving some really powerful examples of how _just intending to do the right thing is not enough_ (Itachi is an even more tragic example). The story shows so clearly how their choices massively backfired that I honestly forget sometimes that the story right to the end seems to think that the only thing that matters is that they were Good Guys Who Did the Right Thing. Don’t look any closer than that, don’t ask yourself if they _did_  have other choices (even if they honestly didn’t perceive any), definitely don’t ask if some of the “wrong” choices wouldn’t have been more moral or had better results than the ones they actually took. (Would the death toll of innocents have truly been higher if Itachi had allied with his clan’s coup? If he had taken out Danzo and his sympathizers covertly to allow Hiruzen and the more moderate elements control? If he had attempted to whistleblow to Konoha at large all the fuckery that was going on? If he had decided “fuck you, fuck you, and especially fuck you, we’re out” and took li’l Sasuke and ran off to another country to open a dango and tomato stand? But I’m getting down a rabbit hole now. [Somebody write me an AU about Itachi and Li’l Sasuke’s Tomato ‘n’ Dango Shoppe.])

IDK if I should tag this hiruzen sarutobi or not? Does this count as character hate? IDK. If there are any Hiruzen fans who feel offended that this is tagged that, let me know and I will remove the tag and/or throw down with you about Hiruzen’s fuckboy-ness at your leisure.

[195 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/155565558453/so-im-working-on-the-kakashis-wish-translation) [#(ง'̀-'́)ง](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/%28%E0%B8%87%27%CC%80-%27%CC%81%29%E0%B8%87) [#i will fight everyone](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-will-fight-everyone) [#hiruzen sarutobi](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/hiruzen-sarutobi) [#hiruzen](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/hiruzen)[#hiruzen was a terrible hokage](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/hiruzen-was-a-terrible-hokage) [#konohamaru](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/konohamaru) [#konohamaru sarutobi](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/konohamaru-sarutobi) [#double standards](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/double-standards) [#anti-bullshit](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-bullshit)[#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#ebisu](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/ebisu) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#but overthinking is fun](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/but-overthinking-is-fun) [#hypocrisy](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/hypocrisy)[#au where itachi flipped everyone the bird and opened a tomato and dango shop with li'l sasuke](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/au-where-itachi-flipped-everyone-the-bird-and-opened-a-tomato-and-dango-shop-with-li%27l-sasuke)





	12. timeline problems and Sakura's age

  * Is Sakura still a 15 y/o in chapter 9 of huab?

Anonymous

Short answer: yes, she is.

Long answer: So let’s talk canon timelines and the inconsistency thereof.

First off, **I believe that in canon, Sakura is the youngest of the Rookie 9.** This is _not_  a headcanon.I believe this _because_  her birthdate is the end of March. In Japan, the school year begins April 1 and so graduation is the end of March. Therefore, **on March 30, everyone in a class is the same age.**  We’re told that the rookie 9 all became genin at age 12 in the databooks. There are only two ways this can be true:

1\. If people with January birthdays are the oldest and December birthdays the youngest (which is what fandom seems to assume), they graduate at the end of December/beginning of January.  
2\. If people with April birthdays are the oldest and March birthdays are the youngest, they graduate at the end of March/beginning of April.

Number two seems a _lot_ more reasonable to me, based on the weather in the early arcs, and based on the fact that the Naruto world seems to operate just like Japan in a lot of other matters of law and custom. (Another example: Rock Lee specifically says the drinking age is 20, which is a very unusual legal drinking age in the real world. Only four countries have that drinking age: Paraguay, Uzbekistan, Iceland, and Japan!)

Secondly. Having established, at least, that it is _reasonable_ to think that Sakura is the youngest of the Rookie 9, when did the whole Sasuke vs Itachi arc take place in actual Naruto?

So here’s Karin and Sakura passing each other unawares:

In general in this arc, people are dressed for rain and cold. The rain and cold are specifically discussed by Itachi and Kisame. Now Elvis McFlippyhair in the background of this pic apparently couldn’t care less, but there are always people like that. The point is, the narrative stresses it is getting colder and darker. Thematically, of course, this is A+++ use of the [pathetic fallacy ](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPathetic_fallacy&t=M2UwZTNhMDc4ZmY1MjYzZGRlOTMyMDljODExYmEwNjE5NDFhNGI2YyxseU5UWGI0ZA%3D%3D&b=t%3AVtJW60Qz95fl8v8C5YCCgQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Ffineillsignup.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F155606140733%2Fis-sakura-still-a-15-yo-in-chapter-9-of-huab&m=0)(which really needs a less judgmental name but I digress).

Then we move to the Pain Assault and we learn that Naruto is definitely 16:

So it’s after October 10th. Okay, cool, awesome, maybe it’s the end of October or the beginning of November–

…except Naruto and Sasuke’s final fight takes place on October 10th.

So how long does it go between Pain’s Assault and the Fourth Shinobi World War? Is Pain’s Assault supposed to have taken place in the early fall of the year Naruto turns 17?

Personally, I just think that’s too rushed, although I admit that Kishimoto probably had that in mind.

_Heart Under a Blade_  is going to diverge from canon, but personally I set chapter 9 (and the upcoming chapter 10, Pain’s Assault) in late October/early November of the year that Naruto turned 16. Then the Land of Iron arc is going to occur through December and January, and then it’s time for c-c-c-canon divergence! *jazz hands*

Under the cut: my combination canon and headcanon timeline for Naruto up to the point of canon divergence in HUAB:

 

**Naruto Year 0:** Birth of Sasuke and Naruto. Sakura’s mother is pregnant during 9 Tails attack.  
 **Naruto Year 1** : Birth of Sakura during cherry blossom season. Kakashi is put back into ANBU by the 3rd Hokage and undergoes various ordeals with ANBU and ROOT during his teenage year.  
 **Naruto Year 5-6:** Sasuke has a fairly happy childhood at this point. Naruto ages out of whatever program changed his diapers (not even Hiruzen could put a baby into an apartment and call it a day and I think Studio Pierrot’s depiction of him living alone at age 3 is almost as ridiculous. Five is plenty young to be reprehensible without being completely impossible). Sakura has a happy life with her parents but is mocked and excluded by peers. Naruto attempts to save Hinata from bullies and gets beaten up by them and ignored by Ko when he gets Hinata.  
 **Naruto Year 7** : Sasuke, Naruto and Sakura start the academy. Ino saves Sakura from bullies and becomes her best friend and idol. The Uchiha clan massacre occurs. Sasuke returns to school a dramatically different person. Here we have the inexplicable problem that canon seems to indicate that Sakura didn’t know Sasuke was an orphan or anything about the Uchiha Massacre when they were twelve. This is absurd and should be ignored/retconned IMO; either Kishimoto hadn’t come up with what had happened yet (plausible, because he was writing as he went), or he ignored that Naruto and Sakura should have known such a major event in order to preserve the surprise for the reader.  
 **Naruto Year 8-12:**  The kids attend the academy. At some point, Sakura, Ino, and most of the rest of the girls develop crushes on Sasuke. Personally I prefer this to happen around age 10. It gives Sakura and Ino more time to spend as best friends, which makes the breakdown of their relationship meaningful; if they became friends and stopped being friends within a few months when they were seven, that’s not nearly as compelling.

Kakashi gets taken off of ANBU and made a jounin sensei, but always immediately fails his genin teams. He does non-ANBU missions.  
 **Naruto Year 13:** Graduation. Team 7 passes the bell test, sort of. Sasuke turns 13. In the summer, they have their first C-rank mission in the Land of Waves. Naruto turns 13 as they continue training.  
 **Naruto Year 14** : Sakura turns 13. In the spring, after a year of being genin under Kakashi, they register for the spring Chuunin exams. Afterwards, Team 7 disintegrates.  
 **Year 14-15:** The former team 7 students train with their respective sannin. Kakashi does various S rank solo missions including at least one failed mission to Ame. Sakura becomes a chuunin.  
 **Year 16:** Sakura turns 15. Sasuke turns 16. In August, Naruto returns to Konoha. 2nd bell test and Gaara rescue mission. Beginning of September: failed attempt to retrieve Sasuke. Naruto spends the month of September training with Kakashi, Yamato, and Asuma. In HUAB, Sakura trains with Katsuyu in the Shikkotsu Forest. At the end of September, Asuma is killed. At the beginning of October, Asuma is avenged and another failed attempt is made to retrieve Sasuke through Itachi. Naruto turns 16. Jiraiya dies and Naruto goes to Mt. Myoboku. At the end of October or early November, Pain moves to secure the Nine Tails and is finally defeated. Mid-November, Tsunade’s coma is not abating and Danzo is appointed interim Hokage, pending a vote “in a month”. December, Five Kage Summit arc and Danzo’s death. Tsunade awakens.

And what happens after that will be a surprise! :3

  * [18 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/155606140733/is-sakura-still-a-15-yo-in-chapter-9-of-huab) [#sakura](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/sakura) [#sakura haruno](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/sakura-haruno) [#timeline issues](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/timeline-issues) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#heart under a blade](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/heart-under-a-blade)[#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#naruto uzumaki](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-uzumaki) [#long post](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/long-post) [#plot holes](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/plot-holes) [#retcon](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/retcon) [#how much time do you have](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/how-much-time-do-you-have)




	13. Naruto gender ratio and team personalities

  * Why does every genin team in konoha must have one "dumb" and cheerful teammate, one cold and reserved and the girls always end up being fangirls?

Anonymous

To a certain extent, this is riffing off a classic trio dynamic. Margaret Cho had this hilarious bit about how in any group of three women, “there’s the smart one, the nice one, and then there’s the ho… look around ladies, which one are you? By the way, I know there’s a lot of Asians here tonight, so if your last name is Ho, that doesn’t count.” 

Superego-ego-id would be the Freudian model here, where the ego mediates between the id and the superego. There’s nothing wrong per se with this kind of trio–it’s a powerful trope for a reason. But you’re right that Kishimoto overuses it, and there’s something funny going on with the gender ratios to boot. If you follow me for longer than, oh, a week, you’ll find out that I have a pet peeve about the unrealistic birth rates of the Ninja World. This unexamined gender imbalance ties into this. If more boys than girls are becoming ninjas, at a two to one ratio (or even higher–the picture of Kakashi’s registering class at the academy features 11 boys and 3 girls, nearly a 4-1 ratio!), then there are two possible reasons that jump to mind: ninja families don’t put their daughters into the academy, or… some form of gendercide, ie female babies or fetuses are being killed/aborted. Or perhaps Kishimoto intends us to believe that the numbers of boys and girls entering the academy are equal, but far more boys than girls become ninja because…? However you slice it, something sexist is going on here, especially because Naruto world powers aren’t connected to biological realities of strength and stamina.

If “they have a cultural norm to kill females at birth” is a plausible explanation to a plot hole, you might have worldbuilding problems. Just saying.

(Yes, I’m aware it’s a show for boys. Honestly, I think that makes it worse. Am I alone?)

[36 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/155839232008/why-does-every-genin-team-in-konoha-must-have-one) [#harshing everybody's buzz](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/harshing-everybody%27s-buzz) [#but overthinking is fun](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/but-overthinking-is-fun) [#plot holes](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/plot-holes) [#Freudian excuses](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/Freudian-excuses)[#ask me about ninja birth rates](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/ask-me-about-ninja-birth-rates) [#worldbuilding](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/worldbuilding) [#naruto world is sad world](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-world-is-sad-world) [#shonen problems](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/shonen-problems)[#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks)





	14. ranking the canon ships

  * I can't really support both of the relationships, sasusaku and naruhina. I tolerate naruhina because we're at least SHOWN some positive interaction. But when I think about hinata as a character I'm very disappointed. She is defined by her love for naruto, her background was wasted. And sasusaku brings the WORST out of each other.

Anonymous

(Hey SS people: IDK if this will show up in your search, if it does I’m sorry, I don’t mean to put ship hate in your tag. If you don’t already know, searching with a # in front of your search term will limit you to people who have deliberately tagged a post. That won’t protect you from crosstaggers, but I strive not to do that. The following also contains what some people may consider Sasuke bashing, and while I am an ardent NaruHina shipper, I am pretty sure some NaruHina shippers may not be altogether thrilled with my opinions on _the Last_  and the ending generally. Set your phasers to scroll NOW if that’s not what you want to read. Also: I ship bash, but I do not shipper bash. Feel free to argue my points, but let’s do so with mutual respect. Thanks.)

I can respect the opinion of people who think canon NaruHina is flawed/dysfunctional, even if I disagree. I don’t think canon NaruHina was developed all that well, but at least as depicted in Boruto, I personally feel that their relationship is respectful, mutually loving, and communicates well; and they both seem to be happy with their marriage.

By canon, I mean the manga through 700, the canon novels, the movie _The Last_ , Naruto Gaiden, and Boruto the movie/manga, which is what Kishimoto himself asserts constitutes canon. Within these parameters, here is how I would personally rank the ships in terms of whether I think of them as well-developed, romantic, and functional:

1\. SaiIno (beautiful. flawless. stunning. amazing. goals [both as a writer and as a married person]. not coincidentally, Kishimoto and Studio Pierrot had almost nothing to do with developing the romance.)  
2\. ShikaTema (very good but such an obvious pairing that they would have had to REALLY fuck it up to make it not work)  
3\. NaruHina (romantic and functional but poorly developed due to plot-induced idiocy)  
4\. ChoKarui (essentially undeveloped in all respects)  
5\. the polar ice caps melting  
6\. meteors becoming crashed into us  
7\. the ozone layer leaving  
8\. the sun exploding  
9\. Sasu//Saku

I agree that Sasuke and Sakura bring the worst out of each other. Sakura turns into a completely different person with regards to Sasuke; that’s bad, because with other people she is a kind, active, assertive, cheerful, talented, caring, friendly, and overall lovely person. Sasuke is exactly the same douche he is in canon to every person but Naruto/Boruto post-699 to Sakura; that’s also bad, because _he is a douche._

Sasuke’s continuous invalidation of Sakura’s emotions, opinions, and need for physical affection is bad enough (and no one ever challenges Sasuke on this), but at least Sakura is his peer. When he does it to his daughter Sarada, it’s child abuse. Sasuke is a _stunningly_  bad father; no one calls him out on this either. He tries to stab her–AFTER she calls him papa. “He’s on an important mission” says canon. He has _literal teleportation powers_ and surely has the ability to write letters and deliver them with his hawks, yet he can’t manage to see her for half an hour once a year? Can’t even once in a decade send her a simple one sentence “I love you”? Pro-canon SS defenders can’t defend this; they can only argue that this is a “plot hole”. It’d only be a plot hole if the rest of canon depicted a Sasuke desperate to be with his family, but it doesn’t. His ice cold public rejection of Sakura’s desire for a hug or kiss goodbye is exactly the kind of uncaring response I’d expect from a man who couldn’t be arsed to see or even communicate with his wife once in ten years.

But back to NaruHina. The worst of canon NaruHina is that because they wanted a time skip for _the Last_ , they have to stall NaruHina’s ship development to what it was as of 699. This requires Hinata to completely atrophy in assertiveness, as you said about her development being wasted. Studio Pierrot appears to have twigged on to the fact that a certain part of the fandom doesn’t _want_  Hinata to become a fully formed, self-confident adult, sorry to say. I think canon skirts the line, doing stuff like having Hinata faint in the recent Sasuke Shinden episodes to tantalize this portion of the fanbase that _likes_  Hinata to remain helpless.

The two year stall also requires Naruto to have a character-breaking level of obliviousness. What, he nevers asks her what she meant in the Pain fight even once? He never thinks about it?! That’s crazy, is what it is; and the result is that _the Last_  attempts to paper over this with the even worse idea that _Naruto doesn’t understand human love_. Naruto? _Naruto?!_  What the hell was the series we just watched, if Naruto doesn’t understand human love?

This is part and parcel of the series’ insistence that everyone gets no more than one love interest. If your love interest dies, tough titties for you my dear. What, did you think you might…. grieve, and _move on_ , like some kind of _multiple love interest having slut?_  That’s impossible. Tsunade? Single forever. Kurenai? Oh you know she can’t find someone new. Tenten? Sorry about Neji but that was your one chance. Kakashi? Apparently Rin counts for both you AND Obito!

So Naruto’s crush on Sakura _has_  to be invalidated from the beginning, under this model. Otherwise… my god… we’d be saying that people can be romantically interested in someone and then decide they’re better off as just friends! We’d be saying that you don’t have to remain forever faithful to the person you had a crush on when you were twelve! What kind of nonsense is that! Clearly, it makes more sense to say that Naruto was just trying to be rivals with Sasuke. Pay no attention to the fact that Sakura was not the only one of Sasuke’s fangirls, nor even the smartest and coolest one (that would be Ino).

Now to their credit, the NaruHina fandom has put their game face on for dealing with the Blank Period and created some truly beautiful content to try to make up for SP and Kishimoto’s bizarre decision, but fanon can only go so far, even if I enjoy it (and I really thoroughly enjoy the Blank Period doujinshi I’ve read).

So it may seem that I’m kind of damning with faint praise here. With NaruHina, it’s not so much that canon will convince you to ship it, it’s more that canon permits you to fill in something really wonderful with fanon. Since I was already a NaruHina fan, for me that’s enough.

Honestly, if the rest of the Naruto ending was good, I’d really have no complaints about NaruHina, because I don’t expect or require great, well-developed romance from a shonen fighting manga. The only ship in the Naruto ending that fails my extremely low minimum level of functionality expected is SS, and at least 50% of that is Sasuke’s treatment of Sarada. My opposition to the Naruto ending, as I have to repeat over and over, is largely unrelated to who ends up together. Naruto’s ending fails as a shonen fighting manga because ultimately Naruto is a failure as a Hokage–he hasn’t reformed or changed a thing that matters. That’s where it fails. Not who’s boning who.

Edit: Also if any SS are reading this, first of all thank you for giving the opposing view a chance, and secondly, what I’d want to tell you is not “stop shipping SS” but rather get fucking MAD at Kishimoto and SP for what _they did_ to SS. Don’t get mad at me for pointing out the obvious facts; I’m just the messenger. Don’t shoot the messenger. Kishimoto and SP ran your ship into the ground! Get mad at them!!

[39 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/156727633903/i-cant-really-support-both-of-the-relationships) [#naruhina](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruhina) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#anti-the last](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-the-last) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#anti-sasusaku](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-sasusaku)[#it ain't about shipping folks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/it-ain%27t-about-shipping-folks) [#anti-shinobi system](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-shinobi-system) [#tw: slut shaming](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-slut-shaming) [#tw: child abuse](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-child-abuse) [#plot holes](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/plot-holes)[#you could drive a car through it](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/you-could-drive-a-car-through-it) [#that's how big the plot hole is](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/that%27s-how-big-the-plot-hole-is) [#tw: child neglect](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-child-neglect) [#anti-sasuke](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-sasuke)[#anti-kishimoto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-kishimoto) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#boruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/boruto) [#naruto gaiden](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-gaiden) [#long post](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/long-post)




Follow up: 

  * I'm glad to see your latest post; I seriously don't see enough people giving Sasuk///e flack for being such a poor father.

Anonymous

Seriously! Like I don’t understand why SS shippers in particular, and Sauce fans generally, twist themselves into pretzels trying to explain away Sasuke’s Gaiden douchery.  I’ve actually seen SS apologists refer to the fact that if Sauce gave a shit he could have EASILY kept in touch with his daughter and wife a “plot hole”. That’s not a plot hole, that’s a plot abyss so deep and dark that light cannot escape from it.

A plot hole would be if Sauce was shown as being otherwise a committed, loving, nurturing father to Sar/ada, but inexplicably didn’t take advantage of the many MANY opportunities he had to be part of her life. The man who tried to stab her _after_ a girl who looks about the same age as his daughter called him “Papa”? The man who coldly shut down her completely reasonable protests? The man who chooses to train his daughter’s _friend_ , rather than grab any opportunity to train his daughter? It is not a plot hole. _He is a bad father._

(If you want to get Freudian, part of me thinks that part of the reason that the worldbuilding and plot in Gaiden is so ridiculously, outrageously bad is that Kishimoto knows very well that the workaholic aspect of Japanese culture is toxic and broken and unfair and damaging to children. So you get this plot that, on the surface, is all about justifying to children why their parents aren’t there, but if you poke it at all, it crumbles to bits.)

That said, it ain’t a crime to invent your own alternate ending where “Papa//suke” is a loving husband and family man. Just… _it isn’t canon_. It shares names and appearances with canon, but that’s all. And it’s _not my fault_ that it isn’t canon. It’s Kishimoto’s writing choices. Studio Pierrot didn’t invent the lack of SS loving post-699.

Gaiden is not a documentary; Kishimoto doesn’t have a window on some other universe where this stuff actually occurred and he’s just faithfully writing it down. You don’t have to be happy with the ending just because your ship “won”–take it from me, who ships Naru//Hina, Shika//Tema and Sai//Ino. You don’t have to be loyal to post-699 Sauce because you liked him in 699 and earlier. Fly, be free!

[47 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/157180011403/im-glad-to-see-your-latest-post-i-seriously) [#calling him sauce to avoid crosstagging](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/calling-him-sauce-to-avoid-crosstagging) [#anti-sasuke](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-sasuke) [#anti-sasusaku](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-sasusaku)[#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks) [#don't shoot the messenger](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/don%27t-shoot-the-messenger) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#boruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/boruto)[#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#anti-kishimoto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-kishimoto)





	15. pro-KakaSaku meta: roadblocks

  * When picturing kakasaku, what do you take into account as potential roadblocks to their relationship (aside from their own problems)? There is a disproportionate amount of focus on the student-teacher thing instead of the fact that for most of the manga, Kakashi acts in the capacity of Sakura's commanding officer rather than her instructor, which I feel would be more relevant in-story. Now I'm wondering if shinobi nations adhere to any anti-fraternization rules like in the real world armies.

Anonymous

I think the student/teacher taboo as a societal thing doesn’t really have a canon basis, because there is a canon student/teacher couple already:

So you have Hayate and Yuugao who progressed from sensei-student to lover relationship. Of course their relationship is mostly from the anime. You also have, in the manga, Jiraiya telling Konan to come and find him when she turns eighteen, because she’s going to be a real beauty. Now I’m sure this wasn’t 100% serious, but it isn’t treated like he’s said something shocking. So that’s the concept of a former student becoming a lover being treated lightly.

I actually think, rather than a societal taboo, it would be more of a personal taboo for Kakashi, because of his own relationship to Minato. Not only is Minato essentially Purity and Goodness in physical form, but Minato was there for Kakashi at a very critical time in his life, when his father died; Minato continually tried to help Kakashi and always had Kakashi’s well-being, not just his utility, in mind. Minato was the best sensei he could be within the context of their fucked up society, and was trying to reform the society when he died. By the Five Kage Conference, I feel that Kakashi’s realized just how badly he fucked up as a teacher, for all three of them but especially Sakura, and when he compares himself to his own teacher, then he’s going to seem even lower by comparison. So I think it would be natural for him to think, “you piece of shit, you were such a shitty teacher to her, now you’re going to mix romance into this?! would Minato-sensei have ever sunk this low?!?!?!”

However, from Sakura’s POV, I don’t see this roadblock as very large. Even when she’s twelve, she never idolizes Kakashi. Right from the start of Shippuden, she’s not afraid to casually drag Kakashi when she tells Naruto to leave him alone “because he can’t help his face being that way.” She certainly doesn’t have Kakashi on a pedestal.

Contrast the way Sakura conducts herself in relationship to Tsunade. Now that is a mentor/student relationship with an enormous power gulf. Sakura _does_  have Tsunade on a pedestal, admires her greatly, aspires to be like her, etc etc. Or, compare the way Sakura treats Kakashi to the way Yamato treats Kakashi. Again, Yamato has stars is in his eyes when he looks at Kakashi that Sakura just doesn’t have.

So to me, KakaSaku, _if they are kept in character_ , really has very little potential for abuse of power or manipulation. Sakura is the opposite of groomed by Kakashi. On the contrary, she doesn’t have _enough_ of a teacher-student relationship with him. That’s a failing on his part initially, but it paves the way for sexy times later on. All’s well that ends well I guess, lol.

Since the Konoha forces are so small, broad anti-fraternization policies don’t make logical sense; there simply aren’t enough potential romantic partners in Konoha. Specific policies such as no sex on missions would be more reasonable.

Anyway. Other potential roadblocks:

1\. The age gap. Of course it’s a thing. Lots of digital ink has already been spilled on this so I’m gonna skip it.

2\. This may come under “their own problems,” but: Trauma. A lot has been said about Kakashi’s probable PTSD and other issues, but for some reason, just because Sakura begins the story with realistic “minor” past trauma of being bullied and teased rather than being a _massively_ traumatized orphan like Naruto and Sasuke, her suffering doesn’t get acknowledged by many people _at all._  I mean, holy shit, reread the Chuunin Exam arc and keep in mind that this girl is 13 tops? She’s barely been trained by Kakashi, she’s just seen her crush get bitten and cursed, both other members of her team are now unconscious, she’s in a forest full of monstrous creatures, and the “rules” of the exam permit _murder._ Then she’s attacked. She has to hold her own. She gets some help from friends, but she is literally at risk of death every single moment until she gets out of the forest.

**THIS IS A FUCKING TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE.**

I put that by itself and bolded it because for some reason a lot of people like to sneer at Sakura that she’s a whiner, a crybaby, doesn’t know “real” suffering. What the FUCK, is what I say to these people. I would like to see how hunky dory you feel after going through what Sakura goes through just as a genin. Yes Naruto and Sasuke and Kakashi arguably have it worse, but so fucking what? It doesn’t invalidate her suffering! Why do people insist on playing misery poker? Trauma is not a game where only the person with the _very worst_ past is allowed to “call” and receive sympathy as some kind of fucked-up jackpot.

And depending on where you depart from canon, Sakura has to go through a lot more trauma, right up through Sasuke putting her into a torture genjutsu where he murders her.

So without getting into who had it worse, they both have traumas to deal with. That’s going to provide both challenges and points of commonality.

3\. Kakashi seems to me to be an introvert by nature, and Sakura an extrovert.

That’s it for now Anon, hope some of it was interesting.

[441 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/157295559703/when-picturing-kakasaku-what-do-you-take-into) [#kakasaku](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/kakasaku) [#pro-kakasaku](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/pro-kakasaku) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#pro-sakura](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/pro-sakura) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto)[#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks) [#long post](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/long-post)





	16. My Deal with villainous characters (ie why I like Madara but not Orochimaru)

  * Like I agree with you the Orochimaru stuff is gross....but like you also ship Sakura with fucking Madara(who kidnapped and abused the fuck out of a child). So like at what point is one allowed to lightheartedly enjoy a fictional character, even when said character is pretty fucked up?

Anonymous

You know this is a good question! Here is My Deal (limited time offer, My Deal™ applies only to me and to no other person on earth):

If a villain is satisfactorily dealt with in canon, then I am more than fine exploring other possibilities with that character in AU and fanon. That includes simply celebrating The Evilness, especially when that evilness is Really Cool.

When it comes to shipping, for almost any villainous character, you can see turning points where they didn’t need to become so villainous. And jumping in, grabbing those points, and running like the wind is something that fandom does fantastically! So for example, clearly, in the comic 1LDK that I just translated, Madara is pretty close in age to Sakura, is not a megalomaniac with Hashirama’s face on his chest, etc. Something changed, you take that as read.

When a villain is _not_  satisfactorily dealt with in canon, but instead the story suddenly expects us to forget everything that happened, I feel cheated. I feel jerked around, that I’ve been manipulated into making a connection with an abused character, empathizing with their abuse and empathizing with their suffering, and then suddenly the rug gets pulled out from under me. The abuser of the character completely 100% gets away with it, and the story treats that as a _joke_. And suddenly, fuck me for being upset. Like, “haha, you empathize with this abuse victim, why don’t you lighten up and forget about it”? I really _hate_  that. It’s such bait and switch bullshit. Don’t try to make me care, and then mock me for caring.

Now when a fandom has this happen, under the terms of My Deal, I just… really find it hard to enjoy the character even in fandom AU. It depends on just how appalling the miscarriage of justice is in the canon source. Orochimaru stands in a category all on his own. I can’t think of any other character that I hate quite as much; my hatred surpasses the boundaries of space and time. _I hate Orochimaru in all possible realities._ It’s not just what he gets away with, it’s _how_  he gets away with it: **he forces all the characters around him to become complicit in his crimes**. This makes all my favourite characters… basically not my favourite characters anymore. Moreover, he doesn’t even have any explanatory backstory other than “his parents died”, which is like 98% of the characters in Naruto, Kishimoto, I’m gonna need a little more than that to excuse even one tenth of the shit Orochimaru is responsible for. 

Intellectually, I can really get how people can enjoy the character, and I know a lot of people can compartmentalize a lot more than I do. I’m not at all saying that it’s morally wrong to like Orochimaru, to think his character is interesting, etc etc. If that floats your boat, then fine. But it makes me _unhappy_  to see some pro-Orochimaru stuff, so for my own happiness, I choose to limit/avoid pro-Orochimaru stuff. (Blacklists are awesome.)

Lastly, there’s also the matter of Dark Fic. Dark Fic and Ship Fic are two different things IMO, this goes beyond the bounds of what I can answer in one ask, but sometimes you want to explore horror, and there’s nothing wrong with horror qua horror in fanfic and fanart. But dark fic involves a kind of realization that _something’s fucky here_. That’s the big problem I have with the Yakety Sax Yamato and Orochimaru in the new canon. _In canon_ , all of these “good” characters are watching child-kidnapping medical-experimenting unrepentant psychopath Orochimaru go about his business _and they’re all fine with it._  This may be a wacky hijinks episode, but Orochimaru cloning and mindfucking his own son Mitsuki is _not_  wacky hijinks, and it only happens because everyone _lets_  it happen. And I’m not fine with that.

[22 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/157376182938/like-i-agree-with-you-the-orochimaru-stuff-is) [#navel gazing](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/navel-gazing) [#that's my deal](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/that%27s-my-deal) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#anti-orochimaru](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-orochimaru)[#why drive on parkways but park on driveways](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/why-drive-on-parkways-but-park-on-driveways) [#and other eternal mysteries of the universe](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/and-other-eternal-mysteries-of-the-universe)[#the world may never know](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/the-world-may-never-know) [#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks) [#it me](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/it-me) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis)[#i may have to take a break from asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-may-have-to-take-a-break-from-asks) [#because my inbox is too full](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/because-my-inbox-is-too-full) [#like y'all ask such good questions](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/like-y%27all-ask-such-good-questions)[#stop being so awesome](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/stop-being-so-awesome) [#can't take it](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/can%27t-take-it)




Follow up:

  * Ya it pisses me off that characters act like Oro isn't the absolute scum of the earth when near him. Like I get it is poor writing and Kishi just isn't looking that deep into it, but I struggle to ignore it. My mind keeps demanding how Naruto just strolls up in this guys lab, like it's nothing? I also don't get Oro backstory either, like are his parents dying supposed to explain his totally twisted nature? I'm more forgiving of nice AU Madara, because he showed signs of goodness, but Oro, idk XD

Anonymous

Oro is an out and out monster. It’s not like this guy did just  _one_  war crime. He kidnapped, experimented on, killed or allowed to die who knows how many children (at least a few dozen that we know about); as well as teenagers like Suigetsu and Juugo and adults; preyed upon the vulnerable and outcast; was directly responsible for Konoha Crush, which killed (according to Kishimoto) _half_  of the Konoha shinobi. Half!!! Imagine that _half_  of the people you know are killed and the person responsible feels no remorse about their deaths, is never punished, and is walking around basically free, toying with his “guard”. Would you find that as acceptable as the Naruto characters seem to?

_**And he’s still. experimenting. on. children?!  
**_

And then Gaiden, woo boy. “Yeah, this is fine, nothing to be done about this. Oro is actually directly responsible for the creation of the villain we’re currently facing, and is _still_ doing the same kind of sadistic medical experimentation that created Shin, but who cares? Not us!”

That doesn’t even get into Taka, Granted that Taka aren’t typical heroes at the end of 699, that still doesn’t mean that it makes sense for Juugo and Karin to continue to assist Oro in his actions; and as for Suigetsu, doesn’t he hate Oro for what Oro did to him? In the closing part of the GNW, them cooperating made sense, but how the hell would they all still be sticking around 15 years later?

Kishimoto obviously _really likes Orochimaru_ , given the major role that the snake bastard played in both of the post 699 mangas that Kishimoto chose to do himself. And how he likes him is as an unrepentant villain.

Kishimoto chose to let novelists and SP handle Naruto’s romance, his wedding, Sai finding his place in the new world, Shikamaru’s romance, a story about Kakashi as Hokage, Sasuke’s journeys–he didn’t want to write any of that.

Instead he wrote a story about Sarada being mindfucked (and if you don’t think Gaiden isn’t one long mindfuck of Sarada, I don’t know what to say), and he wrote a story about Mitsuki getting mindfucked. That was his idea of what a good story requires, apparently. Pubescents being lied to about who they are and parents who put lots of other things above their children.

So why get invested?  If Oro is the one who kills Hinata so that Boruto can have her eye, will pro-ending people still be laughing at his kooky antics? How am I supposed to care about the inevitable further evil deeds that Oro is going to get up to when the heroes didn’t stop it when they could? When it’s Zoruto, grandson of Boruto, it’s still gonna be mindfucks all the way down.

This isn’t the kind of story I want to read, with a truly gross child-abusing villain, who isn’t treated like a villain, in a society built on child abuse (child soldiers and lying to children), where nothing ever fundamentally changes, and everyone pretends that the only problems are external (aliens). That’s just depressing. Compared to that, Madara was goddamn wholesome.

[45 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/158031532673/ya-it-pisses-me-off-that-characters-act-like-oro) [#anti-orochimaru](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-orochimaru) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#don't hold back](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/don%27t-hold-back) [#tell us how you really feel](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tell-us-how-you-really-feel)[#anti-kishimoto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-kishimoto) [#tw: child abuse](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-child-abuse) [#tw: medical abuse](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-medical-abuse) [#tw: torture](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-torture) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis)[#tw: brainwashing](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-brainwashing) [#tw: gaslighting](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-gaslighting)





	17. Obito character analysis

  * whats your opinion on obito? do you find him a good character?

Anonymous

Obito has a lot of elements of a good character, but at the same time, perhaps no other character is at the centre of so much of Kishimoto’s big problem of rushing things and forcing things into the plot he wants, plot holes be damned.

1\. Obito is a Naruto type, a dobe, a loser; but he graduates from the academy and still becomes a genin early enough to be at Kakashi’s first chuunin exams (Kakashi was age six) and they’re the same age? I get why Kishimoto wanted Obito (and Rin and Guy) at Kakashi’s chuunin exam, but it doesn’t make sense for Kakashi to be such an extraordinary genius if apparently every six year old kid that year, even the worst, was considered by their teachers to be ready to graduate and try out for chuunin. I might be willing to suspend my disbelief for this one, but it still deserves to be pointed out.

2\. In the same vein, Obito is a loser and a bad ninja yet he still becomes a chuunin at age 12? How? Is able to give Minato a challenge at age 14, even with the Hashirama cell power-up? How? Is able to manipulate so many, including running Kirigakure, especially when he’s gullible enough to not question at all why he arrives so conveniently just too late to save Rin? How? Again, I might be willing to suspend my disbelief, but [@goodguydanzo](https://tmblr.co/mZIvZUq0km-MvpcGIFWo8ww) pointed out that this wasn’t really necessary for it to be just Obito. There could have been a 2nd Madara-successor to bridge the time gap between Madara and Obito, another disaffected Uchiha. This second Uchiha could have assisted in training Obito during the gap between Rin’s death and the Nine Tails Attack, making his power up more believable; could have assisted with the Nine Tails Attack, making that more believable; and could have continued training Obito while also doing the bulk of the political and organizational manipulation during Obito’s teenage years, eventually ceding the “Madara” title to him upon adulthood.

3\. Like every other “redeemed” bad guy in the series, his conversion is too fast and everybody just rolls with it and loses all legitimate bitter feelings too fast. Good guy to bad guy to good guy turns off and on like a light switch.

4\. The Tobi vs Konan fight was such bullshit on a lot of levels–for one thing, in a world where it is well-known that people can be resurrected and turned into living weapons and where doujutsu eyes can be transplanted, why are people so casual about burying corpses?! Wouldn’t you expect thorough cremation to be more normal? This is the same world where Kakashi leaves a freaking magical sword on top of Zabuza’s grave and it’s _still there a few years later._  Then there’s the way that Tobi’s 1337 Sharingan hax enables him to cheat Konan’s victory, part of a pattern in the series of kunoichi getting their victories shredded.

I like Obito’s character design, I love his fool persona as Tobi and think it’s very clever, and I think the fundamentals of a compelling character arc are there in canon, but there’s just a lot of bullshit caked on.

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	18. Naruto world school system rankings

  * Okay but can we talk about how messed up the Naruto ninja school system is?! It totally singles out and targets the one "loser" in class to be ridiculed by their classmates.

Anonymous

From a traditional East Asian point of view of education, this actually didn’t shock me. There’s a Chinese idiom 名落孫山 “name below Sun Shan” which means to fail to qualify into a program of higher learning. The story behind it is that a father wanted to know if his son had passed the imperial examination. He asked someone who had seen the list of those who passed. The son had failed but the person didn’t want to say this and make the father lose face, so he said “the last place was Sun Shan, your sons name was below that.” And this way he figured out that his son had failed. But yeah there’s a tradition of having ranked classes, rankings within classes, etc, in a way that seems very, well, foreign to people who were educated in a Western fashion.

It’s a hierarchical, Confucian influence I think, Japan got a lot of it too. It’s still that way now really.

In some ways it’s regressive of course but at the same time the concept of ranking people by personal merit instead of birth was in its own way revolutionary. That shouldn’t be ignored.

Put it this way, I can get criticizing the morality of the system for sure and even agree (it has definite bad points), but I don’t think it’s poor worldbuilding. If you want to give the world a fantasy Japanese milieu, it seems like a reasonable narrative choice.

Also sorry for taking so long to answer this.

[22 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/157957365138/okay-but-can-we-talk-about-how-messed-up-the) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#worldbuilding](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/worldbuilding) [#dobe](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/dobe) [#anthropology of the ninja world](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anthropology-of-the-ninja-world)[#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks)





	19. analysis of Kakashi as Hokage

  * what do you think about kakashi being hokage? and about the decisons he took in the series and his character in general?

[saloony](http://saloony.tumblr.com/)

I think Kakashi becoming Hokage after Tsunade (and if Tsunade wants to retire, I say let the woman live, she never wanted the damn job but unlike Jiraiya she did what needed to be done, including getting fucking chopped in half for y’all ungrateful fuckers) is really the only choice. As I put it in my AU fic Your Most Important Person, everyone else who could potentially do it is basically already dead at the end of the Fourth War. In terms of the leadership experience, versatility, intelligence, and (in a better world) moral strength, respect for human life, and willingness to make unpopular or tough decisions, there’s nobody who’s better than Kakashi as of manga issue 699.

Except. Except except except. Sigh.

Kishimoto/the Naruto/Boruto franchise decided reform was boring or “not shonen enough” or what the fuck ever, so Kakashi (and later Naruto) don’t really make any reforms to the Hokage office or to the shinobi system. Also, and I WILL BEAT THIS DEAD HORSE AS MUCH AS I WANT, Orochimaru getting to continue to experiment on children was more important to Kishimoto than keeping dozens of other characters in character or giving them happy endings. Yamato? Get fucked. Suigetsu? Get fucked. Karin? Get fucked. Juugo? Get fucked. Mitsuki? The fuckening is only just beginning, kid. Everyone else who just stands by and watches this happening? Lose all credibility as heroes and, really, as human beings. This includes Kakashi as Hokage.

All the other problematic issues of an economy that is literally based on being mercenaries for hire? The issues arriving in the wake of massive death tolls from the wars? The issues of reconciliation _in practice_  between groups that have legitimate hurts and grievances with each other? Never mind, we have the internet now! And there are aliens attacking!!!

So yeah. Kakashi, the character, doesn’t stand a fucking chance. But at least all his post-699 failures are failures of inaction, rather than active douchebaggery.

My recommendation: look at the Naruto ending primarily as an example of What Not To Do (limited exception for Shikamaru Hiden).

[Originally posted by zeze090](https://tmblr.co/ZJ9-xt1ypbP6F)

You can keep Kakashi twirling in his chair though. The man does love his twirls.

[66 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/158171413763/what-do-you-think-about-kakashi-being-hokage-and) [#twirl away my man](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/twirl-away-my-man) [#kakashi](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/kakashi) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#anti-orochimaru](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-orochimaru) [#anti-bullshit](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-bullshit)[#rokudaime](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/rokudaime) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks)





	20. defence of Shikamaru Hiden

  * "My recommendation: look at the Naruto ending primarily as an example of What Not To Do (limited exception for Shikamaru Hiden" Can you elaborate on the Shikamaru Hiden part. What exactly do you think it did that was right. Would love to know :D?

Anonymous

    1. Shikamaru Hiden has a good villain in Gengo; part of what makes a really good villain IMO is having a compelling, relatable motivation. Gengo has a really good argument, in fact: why should shinobi take all the risks of fighting and dying on the orders of civilians and daimyos?
    2. Shikamaru actually has a good answer to the villain! At first, I was worried it was going to play it off with some more “well I can’t answer your question but um Naruto is good” Talk no Jutsu, but instead, Shikamaru actually articulates that he dreams of a world that is peaceful for shinobi AND civilians and where they aren’t separated. Is it perfect? No, but it’s a damn sight better at answering the villain than, for example, Naruto vs Nagato. And I bet if the SH novelist wasn’t hamstrung by the fact that the shinobi system doesn’t actually get reformed in the rest of the ending, it would have been even better.
    3. It’s an _exciting_  story. It moves at a good pace. There is tension. There are twists. There is suspense, comic relief, intrigue. All the good stuff.
    4. Shikamaru has a compelling personal narrative arc: his innate temperament/personality vs. the responsibilities he has. Shikamaru already developed a lot along this line in the regular series, but he has more to go and the inner peace he feels by the end is just really nice to see.
    5. There’s no Orochimaru in this book! At all! You can pretend he was dealt with in an appropriate way! HALLELUJAH!
    6. The romance is A+++, all the better because it’s not the point of the story. The ShikaTema is beautiful. The SaiIno comes out of nowhere, clocks you in the face, and makes you say “thank you sir may I have another”. IT’S GREAT.
    7. The friendship bonds are also fantastic. Shikamaru and Naruto! Sai feeling alone and unwanted and realizing he’s not unwanted, in fact he’s _so wanted_ that even a girl who he barely knows (Ino) is willing to risk her life to save him and truly wants to know him, the real him and oh God I’m literally tearing up, SaiIno is goals, GOALS I TELL YOU.

[Originally posted by arzicon](https://tmblr.co/ZW4_oi2IExwc3)

IT’S BEAUTIFUL

(Unfortunately Studio Pierrot fucked up the ShikaTema part a lot but the SaiIno was glorious.)

In conclusion, Shikamaru Hiden, the novel, certainly isn’t perfect, but if the entire ending was written as well as it is, I honestly think I would have no complaints.

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	21. Shikamaru vs Sasuke revenge

  * buddy i'm here to tell u what to ship. no i'm kidding. do you ever find it a little annoying when people try to compare team 10 leaving konoha almost against orders to find kakuzu and hidan, to sasuke defecting from the leaf and going to orochimaru? i feel like they're not really comparable, and they're not good examples of why konoha is bad. though a lot of sasuke fans call konoha bad for wanting him to stay while letting team 10 go after kakuzu and hidan, but the situations were different. -

Anonymous

Second ask from same anon: i don't think sasuke was wrong to want revenge on itachi, but he was defecitng from the leaf to join their worst missing nin, who also wanted his body so he could possess it. team 10 wasn't defecting and going to join some missing nin. and i think that's the big difference there. konoha has its faults, but this isn't a comparable situation and it isn't a great example of why konoha is bad, esp bc a lot of these sasuke fans think it's a double standard when it's really not.

First off I’ve gotta say that I’ve never come across that particular pro-Sauce argument. I don’t subscribe to/follow that many pro-Sauce type blogs, and those that do are those that are good taggers and/or pro-Sauce but also not deluded about Kishimoto ruined Sauce by the end of the series. This is an effort to stay in my own lane because I tend to be 110% ready to throw down at any given time. It’s the reason I had to unsubscribe from #Naru//Hina. What I wanted: cute pictures and stuff of my #2 OTP. What I got: that, but also way way way too many sore winners. Yuck.

I digress. So. Point is, I’ll take your word for it that this is a common argument in Sauce’s defence.

I also agree the situations are not compatible.

1\. As you said, while Itachi and Hidan/Kakuzu were both presumably enemies of Konoha, pursuing the Zombi Combi was a much more immediate, limited self-imposed mission. Shikamaru had a reasonable expectation of being able to find them in a specific area and within a very short period of time. It wasn’t a long-term defection.

2\. What changed Tsunade from no to yes was that Kakashi, a jounin, offered to join to make a four-man cell. Konoha DID want to eliminate the Zombi Combi, and Tsunade’s objection to Team 10 going off by themselves was because she didn’t think that three chuunins had a hope in hell of beating two S-class missing nins. Once Kakashi joined, the situation was not comparable. They would still be underdogs, but success was at least _possible._

3\. As you said, Sauce was joining up with the Snake Bastard, an outright enemy of Konoha who had literally **just been responsible for the deaths of half the Konoha forces** _. Let me repeat that._ Oreo spearheaded Konoha Crush–it killed not only the Hokage, but half, half, HALF of the shinobi in Konoha. Imagine that half of the people at your job or school died, and someone whom you considered a friend went to become their killer’s disciple???? Konoha is actually _extraordinarily_  lenient towards Sauce.

4\. Sauce stated outright at this point that if he was able to kill Itachi with Oreo’s help, then he was fine with Oreo taking his body. So Sauce was willing to hand over his body, with its extremely powerful doujutsu, to a completely depraved monster who had already proved intent on destroying Konoha.

Now, I think that even before Sauce left Konoha, when he was making his decision, he already planned to destroy Oreo before going after Itachi. It only makes sense; Sauce knows that Oreo wasn’t as powerful as Itachi even BEFORE getting his arms sealed, so if Sauce would be strong enough to kill Itachi, he would have to be strong enough to kill Oreo as well.

But what he _said_  was that he was fine with the deal as offered by Oreo. Shikamaru and Team 10 were not selling their abilities to any enemies of Konoha in exchange for defeating the Zombi Combi.

So, in conclusion, yeah, basically I agree. This is not a good example of how Konoha is bad. Don’t get me wrong, **Konoha’s government and the shinobi system generally were awful.** But in this particular instance it’s hard to disagree with them condemning one and approving the other. What needs criticizing is all the actions leading up to and following the Uchiha Massacre (Danzo and Hiruzen chiefly, Itachi somewhat, although his culpability is limited by his age and training); the stunning lapses with regard to Oreo by Hiruzen generally; the entire fucking concept of the Forest of Death, and the decision not to end the Chuunin Exams entirely when Oreo started nosing around; etc etc etc, I could go on.

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Follow-up:

  * adding in my own 2 cents if you don't mind. For me, from a story perspective it felt hypocritical because of how many times the cycle of revenge was hammered into us. Shikamaru getting his revenge is glorified while sasuke is demonized. The context of those two situations are different but at the core it really felt hypocritical.

Anonymous

Ohhhhh I get that. That’s a completely different perspective than how I was answering the first ask.

Here’s the thing: I think Naruto the Series needed to come to a level headed acknowledgement that while the cycle of revenge can only end by some people getting unearned mercy, AT THE SAME TIME, some people will not stop hurting others and thus they need to BE stopped.

This is actually the series BIGGEST FAILURE in my eyes, and is the reason why I hate the Naruto ending without any regard to ships.

The shinobi system DOES NOT change.

Oreo KEEPS HURTING CHILDREN.

Children keep being soldiers and not only trained but expected to join in deadly combat.

There is no exposure of the past corruptions of sainted figures. Hiruzen is still idolized, the victims of his many shameful inactions nameless and forgotten.

The Hyuuga caged bird seal? New phone who dis?

Peace doesn’t mean “let’s just forget everything that happened and pretend nothing’s wrong”. That can’t realistically last on a nation to nation level. And in the meantime Oreo is still merrily making new victims. Fuck that noise.

[26 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/158678215033/adding-in-my-own-2-cents-if-you-dont-mind-for) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#it ain't about shipping folks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/it-ain%27t-about-shipping-folks) [#bitter as fuck](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/bitter-as-fuck) [#anti-orochimaru](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-orochimaru)[#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks)




 Follow up:

  * whenever I get the cycle of revenge speech I think about iroh's talk with zuko about azula. Zuko: Now, I know what you're going to say: she is my sister, and I should try to get along with her— Iroh: "No. She's crazy, and she needs to go down."

Anonymous

LMFAO. Yes.

The Narutoverse also really really REALLY needs to learn the value of the Russian proverb “Trust, but verify.” I mean, it’s great that apparently Kabuto actually _is_  doing a good job with the orphans, but the way that Konoha just handed over the care of vulnerable children to him immediately just based on his “yeah I’m sorry about all the medical torture, mass murder, and helping the dude who wanted to destroy the world”, really just underlines how little Naruto society gives a fuck about vulnerable children, know what I mean?

Also I didn’t sufficiently answer this in my last ask: there _is_  a disconnect between “Shikamaru’s desire for revenge of Asuma on Hidan is good and awesome” and “Sasuke’s desire for revenge of his clan on Itachi is toxic and bad”. Sasuke _is_  being strung along by Konoha–Hiruzen knows exactly who is really responsible for his clan’s massacre, and nothing is actually planned to be done about either the one who ordered the massacre (Danzo) nor the scapegoat (Itachi). The Naruto ending completely glosses over this.

The difference to me is that Shikamaru didn’t just want to kill Hidan out of revenge for the past harm, rather it felt like to me it was more about Shikamaru realizing that he had to take up Asuma’s position to defend the Will of Fire; he had to finish Asuma’s task of killing Hidan.

Now the Will of Fire is proclaimed by a bunch of hypocrites, but that doesn’t mean that the philosophy itself is bad–rather what is bad about the Will of Fire is that its adherents _don’t mean what they say_. They _say_ that the village is a family and that they love the villagers like a family but they don’t act like an _actual family_ , that is, where you love and interact with each family member as an _individual._ Instead, rather than a family, the Will of Fire treats the village like a _clan,_ in which the individual clan members can and will be sacrificed for the “greater good”, and whatever the clan does is right. This is nationalism–my country right or wrong.

A Konoha that truly lived the Will of Fire–that is, a Konoha where people put aside their clan loyalties and considered each other person in the village to have the same _right to protection_ as a blood brother, sister, parent, or child–would be very different than the Konoha we see in Boruto.

So. At least in a saner Naruto series that had an actual satisfying ending, I do see a difference between Shikamaru vs Hidan and Sasuke vs Itachi.

[46 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/158679322078/whenever-i-get-the-cycle-of-revenge-speech-i-think) [#did anyone get bingo](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/did-anyone-get-bingo) [#i'm being enabled](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i%27m-being-enabled) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#shikamaru vs hidan](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/shikamaru-vs-hidan)[#sasuke vs itachi](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/sasuke-vs-itachi) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#i'm glad someone likes to hear me talk](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i%27m-glad-someone-likes-to-hear-me-talk) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto)[#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks)





	22. Itachi character analysis

  * what do you think of itachi?

Anonymous

_As a character/creation_ , I have similar feelings about him as I do about Hiruzen: the narrative is irrationally averse to explicitly acknowledging that either one made wrong choices, much less assigning either one any actual culpability for making those wrong choices. Because of this, the power of the story as a whole suffers.

I personally think that Itachi, _as a person_ , is not fully culpable of the harm his wrong choices (and he did make some, more on that in a minute) caused, because of his age, his upbringing, the pressure he was under, and other factors. He is more culpable for some wrong choices than for others.

In particular, I think by the time Sasuke got the cursed seal and Itachi had the encounter with him in the hallway, Itachi _should have known_  that putting Sasuke into a genjutsu was not only morally wrong but would further push Sasuke down exactly the path Itachi himself didn’t want him to take.

[Originally posted by meezumaki](https://tmblr.co/ZV88iu1-D4aE3)

Would Sasuke have gone with Orochimaru if Itachi hadn’t so brutally and contemptuously shown Sasuke that he was still “weak”, that he wasn’t learning enough in Konoha to hope to contend with Itachi, that he needed “more hate”? He might have, of course, but I honestly think there’s a chance he might not have. Remember the concern that Sasuke expressed for Naruto’s well-being here.

Imagine an alternate scenario where Itachi feigns concern against facing _Sasuke as part of a Konoha team?_  I mean you already have Itachi and Kisame falling back fairly soon after this for precisely the reason that reinforcements are coming. I have enough respect for Itachi’s manipulative ability that I think he’s capable of finessing the situation to communicate the message “Sasuke, Orochimaru is no match for me, and going to him won’t help you defeat me.”

At the same time, and for some reason a lot of people have a really hard time with this, I personally am willing to say “this character fucked up big time” and even “this character hurt an innocent person unjustifiably” and still also say “overall, this character meant well and wanted to be a force for good in the world, and I have sympathy and understanding for him.”

This is part of why I say that the narrative’s reluctance to fully call out Itachi, Hiruzen and others hurt the force of the story. Because **intending to do the right thing is not enough.**  It flattens the story, brushing out all the shades of grey and pushing everyone into “hero” or “villain” boxes. It’s also part of how Naruto as a story tends to treat “hero vs villain” as a light switch, instead of a process.

Itachi has a great character design, no surprise there, I would say that Kishimoto’s greatest strength is character design:

[Originally posted by sasuke-x](https://tmblr.co/Z8GXJt1uxEeAi)

Shallow, completely subjective and personal taste observation: Itachi isn’t my type, so I don’t really ship anything with him in it. (To me “I ship it” means “I would eagerly seek out and enjoy smut about it” not “I approve of it/I think it’s a good or functional pairing”. Generally for me to _ship_ something, I have to have some degree of fancying at least one person in it. Sorry not even remotely sorry.)

[208 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/158786519953/what-do-you-think-of-itachi) [#itachi](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/itachi) [#itachi uchiha](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/itachi-uchiha) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#but overthinking is fun](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/but-overthinking-is-fun) [#don't hold back](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/don%27t-hold-back)[#tell us how you really feel](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tell-us-how-you-really-feel) [#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks)




follow up:

  * I hate how kishi glorifies itachi as a tragic hero."he did his best, had the mentality of hokage at age 7" etc. the guy had a fucked up life and made fucked up choices when he got older. Itachi directly to mind torture sasuke and break him then there was his plan of turning him into a "loyal" shinobi of konoha. Itachi is the best brother, sure. I wish the characters and plot called him out at least on his extremist plans.

Anonymous

“Itachi already thought like a Hokage as a child” is unintentionally more of a damning statement regarding the quality of the Hokage leadership in the series than a praise of Itachi.

Honestly though it is all part of a house of cards. They can’t fully call out Itachi without also calling out Hiruzen’s complacency with this atrocity and with many others; they can’t call out Hiruzen without calling out all the clans’ complacency with ROOT in allowing their children to be taken away (eg Aburame Torune and Yamanaka Fu); can’t call out the moral failings of the clan/village above all morality and its atrocities without… y’know… _fixing_  them. And fixing them is hard and makes it impossible to keep telling the same “preteens fight battles to the death” story.

Sometimes I think sequels should be banned, to force creators not to fuck up a perfectly good story to allow a sequel hook…

[29 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/159023778748/i-hate-how-kishi-glorifies-itachi-as-a-tragic) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks)





	23. age gap shipping discourse re: KakaSaku

  * Different anon here! Since you’ve been discussing age of consent, I thought I might chime in a bit: Rurouni Kenshin (have you read it?), written in the 1990s, is set in the early years of the Meiji Restoration era in Japan, and the lead hero and heroine are respectively 28 and 17 years old, iirc. This does not mean that the author or the readers are supporters of paedophilia; it’s just that the work reflects cultural and societal norms prevalent at the time it is based on (1)

Anonymous

> which are otherwise unacceptable today, thanks to a healthier collective understanding of childhood and physiological and psychological maturity and a stricter stance on crimes against minors. Age of adulthood in Narutoverse is much harder to pin down but I think there’s some tentative proof for it being 18. Remember Jiraiya’s statement to Konan? I hesitate to take it seriously - because holy hell Jiraiya, you’re perving on a lieral child, STOP – but it’s there.
> 
> That said, at what point does adulthood begin in a society that raises trains 5-year-olds for combat and espionage and whatnot and sends them out to war??? It *clenches fist* angers me that Kishi acknowledges this issue and so many others but never properly redresses them, and shinobi nations continue to practice child labour and child militarization, which paints the new leaders in such a terrible light.
> 
> Point is a) the continued employment of children and teenagers for hazardous purposes needs to fucking stop b) regardless of that, age of adulthood should be at a reasonably acceptable value, and c) fuck Kishi’s world-building and storytelling, and bless all the fanfic authors who try to fix these in-world problems in their works.
> 
> As far as shipping Sakura goes, though, I kinda prefer slow-burn Sakura-centric fics that take the time to have her grow as a person and shinobi and develop her as a character (because Kishi’s writing of women is just….well. Nope.) and they almost always have her at 19-20+.

(Above is a copy/paste of further asks from the same anon.)

This ask actually dates back to the _previous_  time the KakaSaku community on Tumblr dealt with a wave of hate, or maybe two times ago, IDK, it’s kinda like the ocean on here, and just as salty.

[Originally posted by studioghiblishy](https://tmblr.co/Z3RXfj1sPHVn7)

I recently stumbled across a blog where a Shika//Tema shipper was semi-politely (how polite can you be dealing with batshit) trying to deal with a person who was insisting that _Shika fucking Tema_  was a “predatory” ship because of the age difference (three years! three years!!!).

It’s this worldview where a ship’s  _potential_  to be abusive means not only that every possible iteration in all universes of this pairing is automatically abusive, but also that anyone who supports these ships has cooties and must be shunned, lest they curse you with the evil eye by looking at your fanart with their tainted gazes. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

The Narutoverse is a fairly strange world since it’s a uncoordinated, anachronistic mix of a society that’s literally only _just_ transitioned from a totally lawless, clan-centric, world of constant and total war (to the point where children are expected to join the battelfield as soon as they can grip a kunai), to some extremely messed up villages in a mercenary relationship to literal feudal lords. That’s well within 100 years of the beginning of Naruto.

Moreover, it’s difficult to at all determine the Narutoverse’s norms for sexual behaviour and marriage because Kishimoto breaks into hives at the idea of having to write anything in that realm. We’re left trying to connect the dots between things like clear clan endogamy among certain clans like the Uchiha and the Hyuuga; the unexplained male/female ratio imbalance among shinobi; the _really_  inexplicable low birthrate among shinobi; the lack of civilian characters outside of Teuchi and Ayame; the lack of shinobi characters with true civilian background; the fact that Sunagakure apparently is ruled by some form of hereditary monarchy; the explicitly pro-natal, pro-children “Will of Fire”; almost no one in Kakashi’s generation has any romantic/sexual entanglements; etc etc etc. Are marriages arranged? Some combination of arranged and not arranged? Do people have sex outside of marriage, is it frowned upon, is there a different standard for men vs women, is there a different standard for shinobi vs civilians? Do shinobi and civilians ever intermarry? Why are so few shinobi married at all? Why do so many married shinobi have only one or two children when the death rate is so high?

It’s a confusing mess. The Narutoverse is pretty clearly sexist and within living memory of a time that seemed to have been even more sexist, but it’s not anything like as sexist as real world feudal and clan-based military societies. At the same time, it’s not anything like modern Japan (or Europe or other developed societies) either. Regarding child labour and child militarization, you see slow progress from pre-Konoha (routine, ubiquitous fighting five-year-olds getting killed) to Naruto’s era (only the most exceptionally talented preteens like Itachi see active duty, and most people don’t start taking dangerous missions until they are teens). Yet as of the Naruto ending and into Boruto, progress in this area has completely stagnated.

All of this fighting, fighting, fighting and the constant spectre of death throws another wrinkle into the concept of an age gap relationship. In the real, modern world, if a sixteen year old and a thirty year old want to have sex, even granting that they live in an area where the age of consent is 16 (which is the entirety of my country of Canada), I would still urge them both to wait until the teenager has been living an independent adult life for a few years, and it would be difficult to conjecture a motivation for the thirty year old that wasn’t predatory. But if you’re living in a society where every day has a good chance of being the day you take a jutsu to the jugular, if the sixteen-year-old is already functioning as an adult within the society, if the sixteen year old and the thirty year old really have a meeting of minds, if _another_  sixteen-year-old in that society has literally been ruling a nation for four years? Suddenly it gets a lot more complex?

Plus of course there’s the idea that no one should be allowed to write about fucked up relationships. We only allow pure and completely unproblematic ships in this saga of a demon-infused boy raising himself and fighting other tweenagers in arena death matches. [/sarcasm]

God that got long. Have a more succinct KakaSaku response to the haters gif as a present for scrolling this far.

[Originally posted by neonanything](https://tmblr.co/Z4fdgt2BTMXIh)

[66 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/158977503668/different-anon-here-since-youve-been-discussing) [#kakasaku](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/kakasaku) [#shipping wars](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/shipping-wars) [#worldbuilding](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/worldbuilding) [#naruto world is sad world](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-world-is-sad-world)[#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#but overthinking is fun](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/but-overthinking-is-fun) [#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#long post](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/long-post)





	24. you cannot tell me that Orochimaru is not an abusive "father" when I have RECEIPTS

  * waaaiiit, wait wait wait, i don't keep up with boruto much so i was still under the assumption that mitsuki was just a kid that orochimaru made and was his son. but it turns out that he's really just another experiment? like, even if he is orochimaru's son, he's experimenting on the kid? wth?

Anonymous

Ok so Boruto the Movie came out in 2015 and AFAIK (I wasn’t paying attention to Naruto back then) the fandom was like “Awwwwww! Orochimaru!!!! Snake daddy!!!! Precious!!!! Non-binary parent so progressive uwu”

Then [Naruto Gaiden: The Road Illuminated by the Full Moon](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fnaruto.wikia.com%2Fwiki%2FNaruto_Gaiden%3A_The_Road_Illuminated_by_the_Full_Moon&t=NDU2NzM4OGY5NDM3ZGE4ZTg3MTY2N2M0YmJjOTliM2EwMTJmMDY2OSw1UGRYZ3RnQg%3D%3D&b=t%3AVtJW60Qz95fl8v8C5YCCgQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Ffineillsignup.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F158607931773%2Fwaaaiiit-wait-wait-wait-i-dont-keep-up-with&m=0) came out (in Japan in April 2016). It is so many different kinds of fucked up that I hardly know where to start. I’m going to put trigger warnings in the body of the post itself, because this shit is fucked up. 

**Trigger warnings: child abuse, medical experimentation on humans, medical torture, gaslighting, emotional abuse, physical abuse, brainwashing, drugging.**

Orochimaru is doing some kind of twisted genetic engineering/cloning program. He has made at least two clones of himself, of which one is **Mitsuki.**

Orochimaru uses drug cocktails of some kind to mindwipe Mitsuki, erasing all of his memories, whenever his experiment isn’t going “well”. The manga starts with Orochimaru doing this for the _sixth time_.

Suigetsu, for _no fucking reason that makes any fucking sense_ , is still Orochimaru’s servant, what the fuck.

While Mitsuki is still addled from just having woken up from his sixth drug-induced mind-erasing coma, FOR FUCK’S SAKE, Suigetsu attacks him without warning:

Mitsuki fights back instinctively, and when he realizes that he’s wounded Suigetsu, he’s shocked, and apologizes. Because Kishimoto likes Orochimaru’s victims to be sad, innocent woobies for maximum rage on my part, I guess:

Why did Suigetsu attack Mitsuki? Oh, because if the repeated mind-wiping ruined Mitsuki’s fighting abilities, then he’d be useless!

…but maybe Orochimaru loves Mitsuki? Like, maybe he means well in some kind of twisted way and is trying to do something for his son–

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Yeah. It couldn’t be more obvious that Orochimaru thinks of Mitsuki as property. 

Then Orochimaru makes Mitsuki go through a farce of a “mission”, saying that they need to get Mitsuki’s memories back from a person who had stolen them. This other person turns out to be another one of Orochimaru’s clone-sons and pretends to reveal to Mitsuki the extent of Orochimaru’s manipulation of him. In reality, this person, Log, _is working in tandem with Orochimaru to manipulate Mitsuki._ Naturally, this mindfuckery involves terrifying Mitsuki into thinking he’s powerless and about to be murdered:

What does Orochimaru want Mitsuki to do? Basically, Orochimaru offers Mitsuki a false choice between Log, who pretends to want Mitsuki to rebel against Orochimaru, and Orochimaru, who pretends to want to keep Mitsuki as his “precious child.” *pauses to vomit*

This time, Mitsuki does what Orochimaru really wants: unlocks Sage Mode, refuses to help either adult, and runs away.

After Mitsuki leaves, Orochimaru and Log sit around congratulating themselves, while Orochimaru hopes he won’t have to mindwipe Mitsuki a seventh time. Yeah, having to repeatedly kidnap, drug and brainwash an innocent child sounds like a real drag.

Orochimaru’s “parental” relationship to Mitsuki is just as predatory, possessive, and sick as the relationship Orochimaru had with Sasuke back in the day, except **no one is trying to save Mitsuki** , because Kishimoto turned all the Naruto “heroes” into spineless amoral bastards who did nothing to stop this.

Does Yamato not know what’s going on here?

Does Yamato _know_ , yet nobody, including Kakashi and Naruto, would listen to him???

I don’t know which possibility disgusts me more.

So, yeah, that’s why this fuckery in Konoha Hiden:

[Originally posted by kokoro4kakashi](https://tmblr.co/ZBuHQl2IYBDj9)

absolutely and completely **sickens** me.

[176 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/158607931773/waaaiiit-wait-wait-wait-i-dont-keep-up-with) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#anti-orochimaru](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-orochimaru) [#bitter as fuck](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/bitter-as-fuck) [#just fuck my shit up forever](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/just-fuck-my-shit-up-forever)[#it's difficult for me to fathom what motivated kishimoto to write this](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/it%27s-difficult-for-me-to-fathom-what-motivated-kishimoto-to-write-this)[#he apparently doesn't intend it to be fucked up???](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/he-apparently-doesn%27t-intend-it-to-be-fucked-up%3F%3F%3F) [#but how???](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/but-how%3F%3F%3F) [#konoha hiden](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/konoha-hiden) [#naruto gaiden](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-gaiden) [#mitsuki](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/mitsuki)[#boruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/boruto) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#why can't i have nice things](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/why-can%27t-i-have-nice-things) [#yamato](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/yamato) [#log](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/log) [#taka deserved better](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/taka-deserved-better)[#suigetsu](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/suigetsu) [#yamato deserved better](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/yamato-deserved-better) [#everyone deserved better](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/everyone-deserved-better) [#who has bingo](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/who-has-bingo) [#long post](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/long-post)





	25. some general worldbuilding asks

  * Naruto's worldbuilding is really weak since it focused on the villages instead of countries. But worldbuilding was never the main focused of the series it just bothers me because the villains made speeches about how dark and miserable the world is and I can't care for a world I haven't seen fully. I was caught of guard when they said SHINOBI world like the shinobi way of life only mattered. I'm like "fuck you, you're not the only ones living there"

Anonymous

I got this anon ask a long time ago (months, possibly???) but because I’ve been letting my inbox pile up I haven’t gotten to it until now, so IDK if this Anon will see it. Sorry to all the Anons who send me stuff I never answer btw, sometimes I just can’t think of a good answer at the time or whatever and then the longer it sits in my inbox the more awkward I feel about answering it.

But because I recently answered an ask about Shikamaru Hiden it got me thinking about this question, because one of the main points of the villain in that book is one of the strangest qualities of the “Shinobi World” depicted in Naruto: civilians and shinobi live such separate lives, almost to the point of being like separate species that inhabit the same area, in the Marvel mutants universe sense. But at least within the Marvel verse, mutants usually come from regular humans, but in Naruto, basically everything is about “bloodlines”, with the extremely rare exceptions like Lee (who dates back to part one, when “fighting fate” was an important message in Naruto). As the series goes on, bloodlines become even more important; the Uzumaki turn out to be an extremely important, famous clan with powerful bloodline traits (which creates a plot hole as to why Naruto was given that surname to “disguise” him when it’s the clan with the symbol that’s literally everywhere in Konoha–it’s just a plot hole, Kishimoto hadn’t thought of it when he gave Naruto the name, and it doesn’t make sense). Even more than that, Naruto and Sasuke (and a number of the other most important characters in the series) turn out to be descended from _literal extraterrestrial superbeings._  As well as being fated, prophesied reincarnations.

And yet. We’re supposed to just go along with the idea that civilians call the shots? Own the property and the wealth and the political power, and hire the ninja?

Look at the arc where Rasa has the Suna nin ally with Sound to fight Konoha, in order to impress the Land of Wind daimyo. In terms of power differential, this a bit like the idea of Russia allying with France to invade China in order to impress Burkina Faso.

So there’s a very good reason why Kishimoto deals with civilians as little as possible in his series. The more you look at the civilian power structure, the less it makes sense. Moreover, dealing realistically with civilians would have to involve #1  _actually reforming the shinobi system,_  which is something that the series is never going to do at this point, and #2 _actually confronting the idea of “preserving the clan/village” vs “preserving human lives and human rights” and why sacrificing the latter for the former in things like the Uchiha Massacre WAS WRONG._  The series is never going to do that at this point either. Enjoy the aliens.

[29 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/158324025438/narutos-worldbuilding-is-really-weak-since-it) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#but overthinking is fun](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/but-overthinking-is-fun)[#i lower my expectations and yet i'm still disappointed](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-lower-my-expectations-and-yet-i%27m-still-disappointed) [#i apologize for the delay](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-apologize-for-the-delay)[#the person responsible for the error has had her pay docked indefinitely](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/the-person-responsible-for-the-error-has-had-her-pay-docked-indefinitely) [#worldbuilding](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/worldbuilding)[#ninja world is sad world](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/ninja-world-is-sad-world) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending)[#once suspension of disbelief goes everything starts looking like bullshit in naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/once-suspension-of-disbelief-goes-everything-starts-looking-like-bullshit-in-naruto)[#remember when naruto was about fighting fate?](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/remember-when-naruto-was-about-fighting-fate%3F) [#pepperidge farm remembers](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/pepperidge-farm-remembers) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto)




\---

  * What do you think could have been done in Naruto for it to have better world building?

Anonymous

The foundation of the world-building problems in Naruto is both that Kishimoto was making it up as he went and that at least early on, he was under heavy editorial control by Shonen Jump. Then he compounded this problem by beginning to rely heavily on “It Was Destiny” to excuse ridiculous coincidences, ass-pull power-ups for both Naruto and the Sharingan, plot-designated good guy vs bad guy, plot-induced inexplicable ignorance of things that should be common knowledge, a disregard for moral nuance and an unwillingness to challenge the moral failures of plot-designated good guys, and treating redemption as a light switch or something that happens off-camera at best. All of these combine to make a world that feels fake, that’s so full of plot holes that you can’t “walk” in it without constantly stumbling over this hole or that hole.

So to have better world-building, first things first, Kishimoto could have avoided a lot by thinking things through earlier on. In particular, this would have helped a lot with people not knowing things that they damn well should know. Meta-wise, they don’t know them because _Kishimoto_  didn’t know them. A lot of things about the tailed beasts, the Uzumaki clan, and Naruto’s upbringing generally could have been fixed by this.

Secondly, manga are never really solo projects. From the editorial input to all the assistants, no one person is solely responsible for a manga. Therefore, if a mangaka struggles in an area (whether it’s world-building or *cough cough* WRITING ROMANCE *cough cough*) there’s no excuse not to bring in an consultant to help with that area. This is, after all, ultimately what Kishimoto ending up doing for Naru//Hina (outsourcing the romance to Studio Pierrot and the novelists), the problem is that the required plot timeline for the romances hamstrung the ability of even a genius to create believable romantic and character development, not to mention the Naruto-verse’s creepy obsession with every person having one-and-exactly-one True Love Interest; loves can’t just not work out, they have to be fake and have always been fake if they don’t work out. Also if your True Love Interest dies you’re Single Forever.

So to recap:

    1. Think things through early on
    2. Foreshadow things that will come out later so they don’t feel like ass-pulls
    3. Limit “Because It’s Destiny” as an excuse for coincidences
    4. Be willing to let flawed heroes catch flack for their flaws from people their flaws hurt (!!!!)
    5. Make redemption and reconciliation a process
    6. Get help if you can’t do something on your own

[65 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/159231857508/what-do-you-think-could-have-been-done-in-naruto) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#worldbuilding](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/worldbuilding) [#lazy writing](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/lazy-writing) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto)[#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks)




 


	26. the mission based economy as the flawed heart of the shinobi system

  * There's such an importance on successful missions as it's what their villages' economy depends on. What do they do if they can't fulfill the request? Can't find a lost pet does the owner gets a refund? If things are so peace full and they don't want their economy taking a dive, they'll have to be willing to make a mission out of almost anything and charge a good amount for it. Meaning they could potentially be taking a good deal of jobs away from civilian people. What do you think?

Anonymous

This is such a great question. I’m really wrestling with this subject in one of my fanfics (good, satisfying wrestling, don’t get me wrong).

The mission-based economy is at the heart of what’s wrong with the shinobi system. Why?

1\. The most coherent historical narrative for the Narutoverse is that society pre-the Founders was basically uncentralized, with daimyo (daimyo literally means a great land owner) “ruling” but not really doing much for the common people. Therefore there was no real sense of patriotism or nationalism–everything was very clan-centric. The clan and its continuance was the priority over individual lives. In this landscape, some people over time developed the ability to mold chakra better and better. They started out little better than ordinary soldiers in the real world, taking jobs for hire (mercenaries) but by the Founders Era, shinobi had become so much more powerful than civilians (especially with ninjutsu) that even children were able to be effective soldiers. The power breakthroughs started coming faster and faster, amping up the arms race and resulting in unprecedented bloodshed, which led Hashirama et alia to seek a better way.

2\. The founding of the village replaced _the clan_  with _the village_  in people’s priorities, and encouraged more people to work together. A good first step, honestly. Hashirama also tried to distribute the tailed beasts in an attempt to make power balanced to discourage war–also an understandable step. But the problem was that this was still very much a mercenary society. They were still continuing the pre-villages mentality of work for hire; they didn’t question the role of the daimyos and the civilian power structures.

3\. This is a big problem, something that was made glaringly obvious in the very beginning with the Land of Waves mission: ninja abilities were made available only to those who had the ability to pay; and in this new world of chakra-based abilities (and taijutsu mastery), civilians were _totally defenceless_  against even genin-level ninja. What’s more, missing-nin, under constant pursuit by their old villages, were definitely willing to take any mission, no matter how low. So this forces poor civilians who need help to either roll over and die, or to lie and pray that low level ninja can help them–often just resulting in the ninja dying.

4\. Obviously, this is not going to do the image of shinobi much good amongst civilians, especially since shinobi culture has been attempting to cope with the trauma through emotional suppression and dehumanization of both themselves and their opponents. Shinobi are killers for hire, living tools–the shinobi culture and the civilian culture are going to mirror this back and forth at each other.

5\. So to reform the shinobi system and make an _actually peaceful society_ –not just one where the kage-led villages aren’t fighting wars with each other–there inherently needs to be an end to missions. In particular because the non-combat applications of chakra molded skills are limitless, if you have even a tiny amount of imagination. A really just and prosperous society that is _peaceful_  isn’t one that says to a man who was robbed of everything he owned, forced off his land, and had his family killed by a missing-nin, “fuck you, pay me, that’ll be an A-rank, half in advance”. Yeah I’ll get all Spiderman on your butt and say that with great power comes great responsibility.

6\. So it only makes sense then for shinobi to be directly financed by the state in order to assist in both common good projects (eg imagine all the infrastructure wood release can do) and helping those who cannot currently afford what they need (especially after _constant war which is at least partly your fault, ninja)_.

7\. The daimyo have to go. The series can only offer up a feeble “they preserve social order by giving out ribbons after we all die” from Genma of all people in their defence. I’m not saying they’re going to the guillotine, but c’mon, feudalism? Really? No.

8\. Ultimately, and this would actually be quite tricky, there would need to be some kind of democratic system in which shinobi voluntarily ceded a share of power and decision making to non-shinobi. Basically we’ve inadvertently got a weird X-men thing going on here, only worse. It’s X-men if regular human beings didn’t have guns or tanks or airplanes or any of that. _Completely defenceless._

9\. Super duper ultimately, because I’m too tired to rephrase the previous number, you’d need a _really strong moral sense_  to become rampant, because otherwise “but why don’t we just enslave all these civilians and live like kings” is, like, a possibility, especially since in the past the villages seemed to have very much taken a “mind your own business” approach to atrocities going on in other nations.

Land of Water committing genocide against bloodline limit bearers?

[Originally posted by desingyouruniverse](https://tmblr.co/Zqw55y1_QT3PZ)

Hanzo running dictatorship and brutally suppressing revolution?

[Originally posted by plumkat](https://tmblr.co/Z8Nuqx1p1dqri)

Ame’s new leadership kills not only Hanzo but everyone associated with him, including children?

[Originally posted by jay-quest](https://tmblr.co/ZtBIoo1zJiK-U)

You get the picture. The Narutoverse is very much _not_  a society where anyone ever seems to say “heyyyyyy… maybe we should… do something… about that…” Probably _because_  of that whole “let’s systematically kill our human emotions to cope with killing for money” thing.

Anyway this would be a nice thing for Naruto to change.

[Originally posted by wearecryingdreamers](https://tmblr.co/Zi2hue2J9tsy5)

Or not.

[216 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/159326978383/theres-such-an-importance-on-successful-missions) [#long post](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/long-post) [#tedious length](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tedious-length) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#anti-shinobi system](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-shinobi-system)[#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#we could have had it all](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/we-could-have-had-it-all) [#shinobi system](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/shinobi-system) [#founders era](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/founders-era) [#i'm being enabled](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i%27m-being-enabled) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto)[#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks)





	27. Shikamaru and Naruto friendship

  * What do you think about Naruto and Shikamaru's friendship? Did it need more development or was it perfect?

Anonymous

Oh hello, ask from eight million years ago. I’m going to try to keep up better with asks but I’m not going to succeed. Sigh.

I think the Naruto & Shikamaru friendship could have used some more showing Naruto being influenced by Shikamaru. In particular this would have been something to explore in a better post-699 canon: Naruto’s current primary goal (bring home Sasuke) has been fulfilled, now it’s time to explore what it really means to be Hokage–the person everyone respects, the Will of Fire, and a world where children do not know war.

It makes sense up until this point for Naruto to influence Shikamaru more than the reverse, but as part of becoming the best Hokage yet (sigh), it would have been awesome to see Naruto and Shikamaru truly developing that “leader and advisor” bond.

I do really like Shikamaru’s side of the relationship pre-699 though. His gradual development of affection and loyalty for Naruto feels natural. Shikamaru probably got the best character arc of the Konoha 11 and this is part of that.

[15 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/158536503323/what-do-you-think-about-naruto-and-shikamarus) [#naruto uzumaki](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-uzumaki) [#shikamaru](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/shikamaru) [#brotp](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/brotp) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#sort of](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/sort-of) [#it's implied](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/it%27s-implied)[#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis)





	28. Ninja and Emotions

  * I love how shinobi are supposed to suppress their emotions but these mofos can sure keep grudges. I'm even more shocked that they can't accept when someone dies. Of course it's dependent on the character but did no one in ninja school explain how LIKELY you were going to die?

Anonymous

Even more so, the main cast of non-orphan kids should have all had a long experience of hearing “Auntie is in the hospital and she probably isn’t going to make it, so we’re going there now to say goodbye” and “your cousin’s status has been changed from MIA to killed in action, so we’re going to light incense for him tonight at the family shrine” etc etc.

One of the big themes of Naruto (and one I approve of) is “most people can’t really suppress their emotions, and to the extent that they can, it usually causes more problems than it solves”. So to have sometimes a non-reaction and sometimes an over-the-top “I will kill you and all your relatives and the baristas where you get your morning coffee and the farmers who grew the coffee beans” reaction can tie in with that. Ninja world is sad world.

[19 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/159379046183/i-love-how-shinobi-are-supposed-to-suppress-their) [#ninja world is sad world](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/ninja-world-is-sad-world) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks)





	29. Large Casts are Hard to Juggle but Naruto Wasted Time on Bullshit so I Don't Have Any Sympathy (and furthermore Orochimaru should be destroyed)

  * It took way too long for some of the Naruto characters to get backstories and development like Sai and Yamato. There was all this build up and then just nothing for years.

Anonymous

To be fair, it IS really hard to characterize a large cast. There’s the phenomenon that TV Tropes calls [Four Lines, All Waiting](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Ftvtropes.org%2Fpmwiki%2Fpmwiki.php%2FMain%2FFourLinesAllWaiting&t=NzE2YWNhOTY3MDY0MDJjYjE3NDY1MmY5MTQ3NjZhZmZiNjg2MDQ4MCxqU3A1RGE5UQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AVtJW60Qz95fl8v8C5YCCgQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Ffineillsignup.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F159418557003%2Fit-took-way-too-long-for-some-of-the-naruto&m=0), which is where a series attempts to tell four or more subplots at once, and because it’s cycling between each subplot, the plot as a whole goes at a crawl.

However with Naruto specifically, this is part of what makes the Naruto filler so frustrating. The writing was frequently not very good and often patently ridiculous (ninja ostrich, Mecha Naruto). The show did a lot of moments that were more about fanservice than coherence, despite causing major contradictions. The childhood episodes were REALLY frustrating for me in this regard. Making Obito a Kakashi fanboy in their childhood? No, just no. Making Naruto play with his peers a lot as a kid? That’s… not what happened?

Sai in particular seems to be a victim of his own unpopularity. Kishimoto created Sai specifically to be a fan favourite, but he wasn’t liked at all. I believe that’s a big reason why he got dropped. This is manga as business at its worst.

And then of course the infamous “where’s Yamato” question. In an ending full of injustice, Yamato possibly got it the worst. After having his identity erased, being medically experimented on, being left for dead, being further manipulated by Danzo, being captured and used for evil by Kabuto… after showing us that his only dream is to be respected and acknowledged as _belonging_ … Yamato gets to spend a decade plus doing lonely babysitting duty of the very person who was his first abuser. What’s worse, Yamato is unable to prevent Orochimaru from creating new victims. He has to watch what happened to him happening again, while the people whose approval he yearns for (Kakashi, most of all) ignore what’s happening.

It’s genuinely difficult to come up with a more appalling, unjust ending for a character who has had to eat shit since he was a baby. So what did Studio Pierrot do with this?

Makes it a running gag.

Shit got too real for me with this one. Abusers can get away without consequences if they are powerful and people will give abusers a pass if they’re funny. I wouldn’t call this a trigger for me personally, but it did bring up _very_  unpleasant past experiences, as well as remind me of human monsters who are all too real, like [Jimmy Savile](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FJimmy_Savile_sexual_abuse_scandal&t=ZmFkZTFhZGFiZjU3MjdlNzJiZDZhOGU1YzgyZDViNTZlZTMxYjNmMyxqU3A1RGE5UQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AVtJW60Qz95fl8v8C5YCCgQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Ffineillsignup.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F159418557003%2Fit-took-way-too-long-for-some-of-the-naruto&m=0). (Trigger warnings for link: child sexual abuse, pedophilia.)

This came after Studio Pierrot itself devoted so much airtime to showing Yamato’s miserable suffering.

Justice for those dead children? What kind of show do you think this is? Nope, Orochimaru’s gotta be allowed to live, so he can do this:

So. Where I’m going with this is that although I would ordinarily would be willing to grant a series with a large cast a pass for being unable to characterize everyone, Naruto wasted an incredible amount of time that they could have used to do so, and then in Yamato’s case especially, they shat all over all the development they did give him.

(Did you think you could ask me a question about Yamato without me bringing up how bullshit the Naruto ending is with regards to Orochimaru? NEVER. Worst part of the Naruto ending, completely unacceptable, I won’t forget and I won’t forgive.)

[63 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/159418557003/it-took-way-too-long-for-some-of-the-naruto) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#anti-orochimaru](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-orochimaru) [#yamato deserved better](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/yamato-deserved-better) [#yamato](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/yamato)[#sai yamanaka](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/sai-yamanaka) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#why can't i have nice things](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/why-can%27t-i-have-nice-things) [#studio pierrot that's why](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/studio-pierrot-that%27s-why) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto)[#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks) [#tw: child abuse](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-child-abuse) [#tw: brainwashing](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-brainwashing) [#tw: gaslighting](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-gaslighting) [#tw: medical abuse](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-medical-abuse)[#tw: pedophila mention](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-pedophila-mention) [#tw: sexual abuse](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-sexual-abuse)





	30. Japan's toxic culture of overwork and Kishimoto's excusal of Sasuke's absence

  * [thatshinobilife](http://thatshinobilife.tumblr.com/post/159571936012/fineillsignup-replied-to-your-post-man-i-really):

> [fineillsignup](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/) replied to your post [“Man I really want to read a fic where Sakura just calls Sasuke the…”](http://thatshinobilife.tumblr.com/post/159554420587/man-i-really-want-to-read-a-fic-where-sakura-just)
>
>> Unfortunately canon Sakura has been made part of the “adults abandon you and then belittle your desire for a fucking explanation for your own good kiddies” squad. A Sakura who could call out Sasuke, wouldn’t have let it get to a decade of no contact.
> 
> No I completely agree, this is just another example of everyone’s complacency making them look absolutely terrible when you really start to think about it. For a fic like this to work canon would have to be bent a little either in the sense that Sakura repeatedly asked for contact and never got it or was disappointed with the way he still didn’t seem to be involved when he got back. I mean regardless of everything I still think she has a leg to stand on because she was working full time and still managed to be there for her daughter both physically and mentally. It seems unrealistic that she would foster absolutely no resentment towards Sasuke when she just spent 11 years raising their daughter solo even if she WAS complacent in his absence. You could argue she didn’t really have a say in whether or not he left (and honestly I doubt she did) and was just trying to keep up appearances for her daughter. It’s really everything that happens after they find Sasuke that’s damning to her character.   
>   
> But to be completely honest…..I just need a fic that satiates my thirst for Sasuke getting called out. I don’t care who what when where or why…..I’m just parched over here…..trapped in a perpetual drought

For sure, among the parade of horrors that is the adult cast of Naruto Gaiden, Sakura is among the lesser horrors. I tend to see her as more victim than victimizer, especially since she’s being swept along in a society where _literally all the other adults think Sasuke is doing the right thing._  That just amps up my recommendation for post-699 if you like any of the characters at all (and why would you be interested in Naruto if you didn’t?): throw it out. Trash it.

The plot _can’t_  let Sakura react realistically to Sasuke never, in over a decade, teleporting home or sending a fucking hawk or calling her, because it would cause the entire house of cards that is the ending to collapse.

In light of [Studio Pierrot animator Kazunori Mizuno passing away at 52 from overwork](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fgoboiano.com%2Fnaruto-animator-kazunori-mizuno-passes-away-from-overwork%2F&t=MmZhY2UxYTNjZDFkOWQzZjVjMzBhZTk3MDFhMmQ3ZWMzYWZhOGFjOSwyclRCMUNkWQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AVtJW60Qz95fl8v8C5YCCgQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Ffineillsignup.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F159574025303%2Fthatshinobilife-fineillsignup-replied-to-your&m=0), in light of the fact that Japanese has developed a term for “dying from overwork” because it happens so fucking often, light of the fact that Kishimoto got married in 2003 but didn’t have a honeymoon until 2015 because he was “too busy”, it’s hard not to draw comparisons between the real toxic culture of overwork among Japanese adults, and the Naruto ending’s culture of overwork among its adults.

I mean, when Kishimoto couldn’t find _one week_  for a trip with his wife in _twelve years_ , it is easier to understand how a man like that would think Sasuke’s “later fuckers I’m saving the world” is a totally sufficient reason never to visit, call, or write his family.

Basically, the Naruto ending (especially Gaiden and Boruto) is someone who’s become entrenched in a toxic system trying to justify the toxic system to children. Which is… horrifying, honestly? Kishimoto is telling the children and youth of Japan that overwork and never seeing your kids is just how it’s gotta be, when this system is _literally_  killing adult workers, not to mention how it affects children.

Something happened to Kishimoto between starting this manga at 25 and finishing the manga at 40, and that something is Japan’s toxic culture of overwork.

Reblogged from [thatshinobilife](http://thatshinobilife.tumblr.com/post/159571936012/fineillsignup-replied-to-your-post-man-i-really)

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	31. defence of Sakura and Ino's friendship breakdown

  * For bonds and loneliness being such a huge part of Naruto, Kishimoto actually thought having Sakura toss her and Ino's friendship out the window was a good idea. What's worse is Sakura is never shown making any friends beyond Ino once she comes out her she shell. She probably just studied in her free time. Ino isn't shown being friends with any girls before or after Sakura so she was probably her only friend as well.

Anonymous

I actually am going to disagree with you Anon. I am 100% down for characters making mistakes in childhood and learning from them. In particular, there is a problem in media where female characters are not permitted to make mistakes and bad girls are not embraced by fandom or allowed redemption arcs anything close to as much as bad boys are.

Raise your hand if you did something shitty to a friend in childhood/tweenhood that still causes you to cringe when you remember it. I hope I’m not the only one who metaphorically has my hand in the air.

Also, small correction, Ino was shown being quite popular in flashback. Remember, the first thing smol Ino does when she gives smol Sakura the ribbon is introduce her to the other girls:

The manga actually shows their friendship slowly deteriorating over time in the ch. 54 flashbacks. To my mind, something the fandom hasn’t acknowledged enough is how much of that deterioration is that Ino isn’t honest with Sakura (or, possibly, with herself):

Sakura tells Ino and the other girls about her crush immediately when she starts to have it. But Ino, over time, consistently denies having any feeling for Sasuke (Sakura telling the girls and this scene are implied to be different days).

Sakura tells Ino openly about her crush… like you do, with your friends, when you’re a tween. But Ino _never_  tells Sakura that she likes Sasuke; Sakura confronts Ino and says “ **everyone says** you’re after Sasuke too, Ino.”

That’s not cool friend behaviour. Whether it’s about a boy or not isn’t the point: Ino lied by omission to Sakura about them being after the same goal. Even if it’s sad that they couldn’t work it out, I understand Sakura’s feelings in responding with “okay bitch I’m out for your blood now just saying”:

Is it sad that they had a friendship breakdown? Um, yes. Yes it is. It’s a past mistake on _both_  of their parts, and something that they realistically resolve by 1. getting a bigger perspective e.g. “Sakura may be my rival but I’m not just going to stand by and let her be killed” 2. developing respect for each other as kunoichi and 3. realizing that they can be rivals and also friends _if they are respectful of each other and support each other._

Honestly, I love it and think their friendship arc one of the better parts of the Naruto manga.

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	32. fixing the plot hole caused by Naruto being given the surname Uzumaki

  * You're the perfect mix of salty and logical and I need help writing about a Naruto fail close to your heart. How do you think a situation would go with someone directly confronting Hiruzen about smol Naruto's living situation? I'd like to have a character reach over and throttle him, but that's probably not the right way to deal with a military dictator. Would he fail to see the problem, or play the bigger picture card?

[jemsquash](https://jemsquash.tumblr.com/)

There’s a plot hole here that I think is basically impossible to reconcile and which is caused by Kishimoto’s poor planning.

Basically, from a meta story perspective, Naruto needs to be in the dark about his origins. So the story tries its “everyone in the village is forbidden to talk about Naruto actually having the Nine Tailed Fox sealed within him and also him being the Fourth’s son, and also we’re going to give Naruto his mother’s surname” The reason being “to protect Naruto from enemies of the village/his father.”

Okay so far as it goes. Yes, it’s impossible in reality to expect an entire city to be able to keep that kind of a secret, especially in a world where we’re shown that the villages actively spy on each other, but I might be willing to suspend disbelief for that.

The problem is that Kishimoto then decided to make Naruto’s mother the previous jinchuuriki and to make her clan, the Uzumaki, such a powerful and famous clan that the swirl symbol everywhere in Konoha was in their honour. This immediately makes the entire thing absurd and goes beyond “willingly suspend your disbelief” level for me, personally. In what possible universe could giving Naruto the surname _Uzumaki_  hide him from enemies? In the universe Kishimoto _gave_  him that surname–a universe where the surname Uzumaki didn’t mean anything much.

So you’ll need to be careful writing any scene touching on this issue because the second you draw the reader’s attention to it, everyone realizes how absurd the situation is and the stated reasoning behind Naruto’s growing up in ignorance falls to shreds. An idiot wouldn’t come up with that kind of plan, and Hiruzen is supposed to be this extremely smart guy? It just doesn’t work as anything except “the writer fucked up and decided he wanted the Uzumaki to be awesome more than he wanted continuity”.

Sooooo let’s agree to retcon “we kept your heritage a secret to hide you from enemies!!!!” Because that’s bullshit. Cool. Now what?

A more plausible reason for the facts we want to keep for meta reasons–Naruto doesn’t know who he is, what’s inside him, and why–is that Naruto’s background is being specifically held back from Naruto and the other children because the adults don’t know how a small child will handle that kind of information. It’s being kept from Naruto because he might freak out (in a really BIG way), and it’s being kept from his peers because kids might blurt that kind of thing out.

Under this scenario, Naruto’s surname is changed in case _Naruto_  would draw the connection to the surname of the Fourth (whose face looks a lot like Naruto).

I know fandom likes to write “people were constantly beating Naruto up” type scenarios for Naruto’s childhood, and then lately SP has been coming out with the opposite, in those weird filler episodes where Naruto was buddies with everyone (fuck outta here with that shite), but what I see in the manga, and what honestly makes a lot of _sense_ , is not that he was persecuted, just that he was shunned, that businesses locked their doors when they saw him coming and mothers pulled their kids off the playground and ran home.

Why do I say it makes a lot of sense? Well, when Kishimoto wrote the Chuunin Exams and everything with Gaara he hadn’t actually come up with the jinchuuriki concept yet, but we’ll pretend we’re dealing with a reality in which “jinchuuriki” is a known concept. At the same time as Naruto is alive, there is a jinchuuriki of his age in an allied village who keeps killing people. All the sordid details of his infancy and early childhood probably wouldn’t have filtered to the outside world, but “baby tailed beast holder keeps killing adult ninjas” absolutely would have.

In such a world, would _you_ want to go near your village’s Sealed Evil in a Baby? We might like to think we would, and while _somebody_  should have (more on that in a minute), the fear is pretty rational here, and especially not wanting your kid to play with this kid. But you’re forbidden from telling your kid why. So you just gotta say “don’t play with that kid because He’s Bad.”

Now, further thought on Naruto’s living situation. It’s pretty obviously the norm in Naruto society for orphans to live alone. Not only Naruto, but Iruka, Kakashi, and Sasuke are all shown as living alone while academy aged. So in one sense, Hiruzen isn’t giving Naruto any kind of especially cruel treatment here; it’s just that it’s a cruel society generally. But it’s consistent with “society that has child soldiers,” so I’d say this is decent worldbuilding, really.

Therefore it would be difficult to believably get someone entrenched in this society to call this out, you’d have to really work at it. Kakashi, who lived it, isn’t appalled by Naruto living alone; he’s appalled by Naruto not doing his chores. Iruka, who also lived it, doesn’t quite come to the point of fully realizing that this is wrong, but he does empathize with Naruto and acknowledge the pain of the living situation, even if he isn’t to the point of saying that Naruto shouldn’t be in that living situation.

Okay, so where _could_  someone within this society believably call Hiruzen out and actually have the hit connect? I think it’s going to be two points:

1\. Minato and Kushina specifically asked Hiruzen to care for Naruto. Hiruzen may think his “kindly hair ruffle when I see him around” etc act is enough to fulfill this promise, but I think he could be nailed on this point.

2\. Hypocrisy of Konohamaru’s treatment vs. the other orphans. Ohhhhh boy is this one ripe for exploitation and if I was going to have a character call Hiruzen out, this is the bell I would ring. Why doesn’t Naruto have a private tutor? I’m gonna repeat that again and bold it, **Why doesn’t Naruto have a private tutor?**  He’s a jinchuuriki, who are supposed to become weapons for their village–why aren’t they training their own weapon?!

Okay, I hope that helps, and please send me a link to your writing when you post it! :D

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	33. Kanji Decorations in the Hokage Tower

  


I’m surprised that I can’t find someone already writing about this, but I noticed that Tsunade’s office and the halls of the Hokage Tower are decorated with kanji and I thought people who don’t read kanji might be interested.

Disclaimer: I read Chinese, not Japanese, but the meaning of characters and four character idioms is the same more often than it is different between the two languages; also I have crosschecked against Japanese dictionary jisho.org

Ok, so, the above image to start.

## 忍

On the left, you see the single character I most want you to know, love, and appreciate with regard to Naruto. This is the character for the “nin” in “ninja” and “ninjutsu” and the “shino” in “shinobi”. But. It also means “endure, bear up under, tolerate, to move patiently, to be stealthy”.

I feel this is one of the most beautifully evocative characters, it consists of a heart 心 under a blade 刀 (as fans of my fanfic already know). So this character is communicating the concept of enduring even at a knife’s point.

When Jiraiya and Orochimaru are having their pissing contest about what “ninja” means, when Jiraiya says a ninja is one who endures, he didn’t pull that out of nothing. 忍者 “ninja” could, in fact, be literally translated as “endurer” with perfect truth.

## 怒

So this is an interesting choice and it caught my eye. This character means “anger” or “rage”. So already this is an interesting choice to pair with 忍.

You’ll also notice that like 忍 this character has heart 心 at the bottom. The top of this character is 奴 “(female) slave” which is composed of 女 “woman" and 又 “right hand”.

Now technically this is a phonetic component, but it’s hard to miss the plain arrangement of the characters and I would reject any attempt to say that the choice is completely arbitrary. The notion that “anger, rage” is something “slavish about the heart,” and the fact that the character for “anger” is made up of “woman, hand, heart”, is not something that people are going to just not notice over millennia.

The juxtaposition of these two characters implies to me a kind of balance that perhaps Tsunade particularly wants to inspire her, since this is her office. On the one hand, endure. On the other hand, take no shit.

## 泰然自若

“Taizen jijaku”: cool and collected

## 温厚篤実

“Onkou tokujitsu”: gentle and sincere

## 天衣無縫

“Tenimuhou”: flawless (heavenly clothes without seam, literally)

## 金科玉律

Now this is interesting, I couldn’t actually find this idiom in either of the Japanese dictionaries I checked. In Mandarin, this would be “jin1 ke1 yu4 lü4″ and it literally means “golden regulations, jade laws”–presented in isolation as an inspirational image, like this, it basically means “our rules and laws are precious and unbreakable” (!!!!!!!!!).

Anyone spot anymore of these hanging scrolls? I think they’re very interesting, in the complementing and contrasting ideals that they’re portraying.

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	34. Boruto can't be a happy ending to Naruto and tell the stories that Boruto's runners want to tell

  * This will never be addressed in Boruto but if the primary villains are going to be missing nin that goes against the what the ending wants readers to believe. That everything is going great for ninja but instead supports that the the economy is in trouble. Why would so many ninja desert when things are suppose to be better than ever? The only reason would be that there is better profit to be made by going rogue and it's worth the cost of being hounded by their village. (part 1)

Anonymous

Why are there missing ninja? Meta reason: They need villains, and they just did aliens for the last two movies in a row. They _could_ face up to what Orochimaru’s been doing for the last fifteen years and what he is _still_  doing and make _him_  the villain… but they’re not going to do that.

Yeahhhhh it’s crazy isn’t it.

I wrote about this a little in Ch. 7 of _Your Most Important Person_ , basically this is the flip side of why the shinobi system is bad from a perspective that we don’t usually consider in Naruto, that of civilians. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of non-ninja police/military/law and order in the nations, so essentially the only way to be safe is to purchase safety. Can’t afford to hire ninjas to guard your caravan/shop/farm? Can’t afford _good_  ninjas to guard your caravan/shop/farm? You’re SOL.

Suppose you know your child has been kidnapped by a rogue ninja, say… Snakebert. (Any similarity to any other ninja with plot-based immunity to kidnapping and killing children is coincidental.) Snakebert’s got your kid, Civilian-san. Now, even if Snakebert is a genin-level ninja, you are completely incapable of standing up to him, Civilian-san, because you’re a civilian. But Snakebert is way stronger than a genin. You can figure out at least that much, although it would be too much to expect you to exactly know how to rate high level ninja.

So. You gather all your money and you go to your ninja village and you see that your life-savings will pay for a B-rank.

Are you going to be honest about what the danger is? If they say it’s an A or S-rank, you can’t pay it, and then you’re left with nothing. SNAKEBERT HAS YOUR DANG KID. Something has gotta be better than nothing!!!

So you lie and you get whatever you can afford.

This is inevitable in any mission-based justice system and is part of the reason why the shinobi system was inherently flawed, corrupt, and unjust, and needed to be ripped up from the foundations to achieve true peace.

We aren’t meant to believe that the Naruto economy is in shambles; we’re supposed to believe that Naruto is a strong leader of a strong Konoha and there are shiny buildings and video games and fast food and isn’t everything wonderful???

Unfortunately for its own desire to say EVERYTHING IS FINE, WE’RE ALL FINE HERE, HOW ARE YOU?, the Naruto ending has this neurotic, pathological urge to make fun of all the female characters. If they have to make a choice between consistent world-building, plot logic, character motivation coherence, etc etc on the one hand, and the ability to make a cheap dig at a female character on the other hand, they go for the cheap dig _every fucking time._

Tenten, haha your business is failing.  
Temari, haha your son can’t be assed to greet his uncles properly, your role now is to be Nara Yoshino 2.0.  
Sakura, haha you ask your husband for a kiss in public and he shuns you, that’ll teach you to need affection.  
Ino, haha your children’s generation doesn’t show up to train and you are in a constant petty battle with your teammate’s wife.

I could go on but it’s too depressing. In so many of these cases, _the complete opposite of that_  would make so much more sense for the character, the world-building, and the plot. But they just. can’t. stop. themselves.

But going back to the beginning. Yes it WOULD make sense with the economy in shambles that there would be missing nin!

But the economy is not in shambles because Naruto is a good Hokage!

Also, Oceania has ALWAYS been at war with Eurasia!

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	35. death toll of Konoha Crush

  * Konoha Crush was a missed opportunity for Sakura. She could have been shown gazing in horror at all the dead and injured ninja It also would have been a good time to show her parents. They could have been injured fighting with medical ninja treating them but it's iffy and they're short staffed. She goes home alone, reflects over her progress from the academy fighting over a boy to fighting real ninja. Her relationship with her team about how they must feel coming home to an empty house everyday.

Anonymous

You’re right that Sakura would have been a natural POV character to mediate for the view in dealing with Konoha Crush, but the drawbacks with it go further than just missed opportunities with Sakura’s development.

A lot of people like to point out the “plot hole” that the Sasuke retrieval team was just a bunch of genin, but actually this has an in-story explanation: the loss of life from Konoha Crush was so severe that half of the Konoha forces died; however Tsunade was attempting to fill the same mission workload as before with only half the staff, under the belief that otherwise they’d be displaying weakness to Konoha’s enemies.

Oh, what’s that? You don’t remember that? Maybe because other than being the stated reason why Shikamaru and company were the only people available to chase down Sasuke, _it absolutely did not feel like half the Konoha ninja died._

Now, living in a military society with a high death rate, reactions to deaths might not be the same as our modern low-death rate societies, but such an enormous sudden death toll should have had a hell of an impact. The Konoha 11 should have been dealing with the deaths and serious injuries of roughly _half the people they knew._  Holy shit.

And it’s not just impact on survivors and the mission scramble. Konoha should have been drawn with noticeably smaller crowds in the wake of Konoha Crush and all through Shippuden.

Try this headcanon on for size: why don’t we ever see any genin or chuunin the same age as Team Guy?

Because they weren’t entered in that particular Chuunin Exam and they all died in Konoha Crush.

The problem with the death toll in Naruto is not that “not enough people die” but “the deaths that happen don’t mean anything.”

Even the Uchiha Massacre should really be called “the Sasuke’s parents’ Massacre” in terms of the actual plot impact of the deaths; the dozens of Uchiha who died that  _weren't_ Sasuke's parents might as well be made of paper, for how easy they’re killed and how much anyone seems to remember them.

Now partially I think this is on purpose, to give a lighter feel to the series. For example, I think part of the reason why ANBU, despite supposedly being the elite of the elite, die so frequently and easily is because they are dehumanized by their masks; they’re a cheap way to show that an enemy is tough without actually making us think about little Ken-kun at home hoping that tou-chan will be home for his baseball game.

The same goes for the cheap use of zetsu clones and Edo Tensei in the final war. Enjoy this delicious violence guilt and consequence free, essentially.

The problem is that Naruto fans, when they talk about the moments that grabbed them most in the series, they’re going to talk about the moments where the danger and the enemy was real, and the effects had impact–Lee vs Gaara, Kakashi’s childhood, Kakashi vs Obito in the Kamui dimension, Naruto vs Sasuke in the final valley.

If Naruto, the series, kept the same overall _number_  of deaths but made those deaths have _actual impact_  on the survivors in a somewhat more, if not completely realistic way, the overall victories and growths of the characters would have been so much more moving.

In a universe where the deaths had actual impact, however, fans wouldn’t accept the unreformed shinobi system of the canon ending and Boo-ruto so easily. In a universe where Orochimaru’s nameless victims weren’t ignored, I sure as hell hope that audiences wouldn’t watch Hokage Naruto looking at a kid in a tank in his lair and think, “it’s totally cool that Naruto doesn’t ask any questions about this or try to help Orochimaru’s current victims, after all, it’s none of his business really.”

can I make every question into a question about how much Orochimaru ruined the ending well the answer is YES

OROCHIMARU DELENDA EST

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	36. animal summons: an acceptable plot hole and why

  * Summoning animals have a weird place in Naruto land. What do they get out of the arrangement? They get ripped from their homes to fight and die for nothing. They live in completely different worlds so what happens there shouldn't be a concern for them. Nothing forces them to fight for their summoner yet they chose to. They don't belong to a village unless they were raised/live there so they can end up fighting their own friends. Being able to talk isn't even a common trait for ninja animals.

Anonymous

You know this is a great question. The reason I think this is a particularly great topic to bring up in relation to all the other “what’s wrong with Naruto land” questions is that the plot holes required to have summoning animals is what I consider a _good_  and _justified_  use of willful suspension of disbelief.

For any story, but especially a shonen fantasy story like Naruto, there’s going to be times when what TV Tropes calls the “Rule of Cool” justifies something that would otherwise be absurd. Why do ninjas call out their attacks, which will alert the enemy to what’s happening? Because it’s cooler that way. Why do ninja make do the hand jive to cast spells, sorry, jutsu? Because it’s cooler that way. Why do all the Akatsuki have snazzy rings and nail polish and incredibly eye-catching garments? Because it’s cooler that way!

Why does Kakashi have a bunch of doggos in matching outfits and Guy has a smart-mouthed perpetually done with everything turtle and the lovely and hot-tempered Tsunade and Sakura have a giant polite gastropod and human bouncy ball Naruto have frogs that force him to eat grubs instead of ramen?

[Originally posted by smlyz](https://tmblr.co/ZKb1Yk24F21UW)

[Originally posted by itachiandsasuke](https://tmblr.co/Z19Acl29FDM1Y)

Hell yes it’s cooler that way!

Readers/viewers are, generally, willing to suspend disbelief in order for cool/funny/awesome/amazing shit to happen, and I am of that number. What’s the downside for summons? I might think about it idly, and I would support fanon or even canon trying to make it more believable, but honestly I am 100% willing to suspend my disbelief.

Note to all content creators: I am not, and never will be, willing to suspend my disbelief or overlook plot holes in order for you to stomp on my favourite characters and/or their hopes and dreams. That doesn’t mean you can’t stomp on them–sometimes it hurts so good–but you gotta do that shit _fairly._

I am willing to ignore logic if that means that I get to see sarcastic puppers with henohenomoji vests.

[Originally posted by kitteninspaghetti](https://tmblr.co/ZsRPIy16DTHeI)

Everything is worth this.

I am not willing to ignore logic so that Tenten’s business is failing yet we’re told Konoha is prosperous and everything is fine. The only reason why someone would suspend disbelief willingly for that is if they thought Tenten being miserable watching her dreams turn into dust was so gosh heckin’ hilarious that it excused the plot hole.

Hell no. I don’t want to see Tenten alone, worrying about bankruptcy and seeing nobody caring about her priceless artifacts. I want Tenten to be _happy_. So don’t make her miserable without an _actual reason that makes sense._ Because I will not suspend disbelief for that.

(I deliberately didn’t use Snakebert and his countless related plot holes as the example this time. THE FRUIT IS HANGING SO LOW. YET I RESISTED.)

[67 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/160142075998/summoning-animals-have-a-weird-place-in-naruto) [#summons](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/summons) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#tenten](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tenten) [#pakkun](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/pakkun) [#katsuyu](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/katsuyu)[#willing suspension of disbelief](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/willing-suspension-of-disbelief) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks)





	37. ShikaIno and what it would mean for InoShikaCho

  * I wanted shikamaru and ino to get together because I wondered what would happen to ino-shika-cho if they were short one member.

Anonymous

Now this is an area where I probably wouldn’t expect a shonen manga to get into realism, and Kishimoto seems to have particular hang-ups in the sexuality department, but I’m like you in being fascinated by the Anthropology of the Ninja World (I even have a tag for it). Marriage, family formation, kinship systems, reproductive strategies; these are all fascinating to me generally, and in particular in a worldbuilding sense.

We are shown a Naruto world where, in Naruto’s generation, reproductive patterns are similar to modern Japan or even less (in 1999, when Naruto was first published in Japan, it had a total fertility rate of 1.34 births per woman). However, unlike modern Japan, the Naruto world has an exceptionally high death rate, extremely powerful loyalty to the continuation of one’s clan and village, and genetically transmitted superpowers. This makes this reproductive choice completely illogical.

We’re asked to suspend disbelief because 1. large casts are really hard (truth) and Naruto already has a huge one so also designing and characterizing everyone’s siblings would be a huge burden 2. the belief that tweenage boys don’t care and probably won’t even notice (probably true) 3. romance and sex are icky and Kishimoto doesn’t want to think about it.

In the real world, even without knowing your children would inherit your superpowers, in societies where having an heir was important, the principle of “the heir and the spare (or two or three)” was a big deal (understatement). Yet Naruto’s InoShikaCho are explicitly only children who also each only have one kid and appear to be the children of only children (not for sure, but there’s certainly no aunts and uncles as such who appear in canon). 

In Heart Under a Blade, my fanfic, because I’m explicitly trying to have a more coherent world, it does come up and basically the clans forbid the relationship. Ino doesn’t want to go along with it but Shikamaru isn’t willing to fight so it does end up ending the relationship when it’s only just beginning. There is also the issue that Ino finds out she’s expected to find someone who is willing to join her clan–ie she should give up on Sasuke and any other guy like him with strong clan loyalties.

To a certain extent I’m hampered by what I’m given–there’s really no explaining the low marriage and birth rate other than meta reasons. Funnily enough, introducing other fantasy elements like soulmarks or ABO dynamics actually makes it make more sense. XD

Edit: Oh also if you’re a ShikaIno fan, Anon, I’m actually working on a ShikaIno comic translation right now so stay tuned for that. :3

[33 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/160200315188/i-wanted-shikamaru-and-ino-to-get-together-because) [#shikaino](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/shikaino) [#anthropology of the ninja world](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anthropology-of-the-ninja-world) [#worldbuilding](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/worldbuilding) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis)[#heart under a blade](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/heart-under-a-blade) [#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto)





	38. hating Snakebert is the fun game everyone can play

  * You hate Snakebert (is it okay that I steal that from you?) as much as I do so I wanted to rant with ya. The Sound was introduced in Boruto as once attacked the Leaf but now they're bffs. Funny how they didn't mention how Orochimaru experimented on the Leaf's people. What's messed up is the angle the show is going with. Which is to make the Sound a red herring. So viewers will think they're the bad guys again but in the end it wont be them it will be some new villain maybe a past experiment. P1

Anonymous

> Mitsuki is a cool character but he just proves that Orochimaru hasn’t changed Orochimaru wants Mitsuki to be Boruto’s moon (whatever that means), he wants him to be a ninja, he wants him to make the choice in his experiment that he deiced is “correct” Never asked what Mitsuki wanted because to him it doesn’t matter, he’s just another experiment to control The only way Snakehoe is different is that instead of chasing after Uchiha ass he’s indirectly going after Boruto

First off: yes, please feel free to use Snakebert. (For anyone who isn’t aware of how I came up with Snakebert, Orochimaru is literally orochi = snake + maru which is a basically meaningless component of male given names, similar to “bert” as a basically meaningless component in male English names like Albert, Herbert, Robert, etc. So, I over-translated Orochimaru to Snakebert.)

There is something _extra_  twisted about Orochimaru’s manipulation of Mitsuki. Basically, Orochimaru continuously wiped Mitsuki’s memories and restarted Mitsuki’s life until Mitsuki chose to _reject manipulation_.

Orochimaru lets Mitsuki have the illusion that he is running away and escaping Orochimaru’s sphere of influence when actually he is doing _exactly what Orochimaru wants._  Isn’t there something extra sick about that?

Mitsuki’s one-shot manga ends with him all alone in the world, with only one thought: no one is trustworthy.

It may be fancied up with a lot of ninja window dressing, but if you take out the cloning, the magical memory erasing drugs, the sage mode, etc, here’s the story you’re left with:

A man controls his son’s environment and continuously browbeats, manipulates, lies to, cajoles, gaslights, and otherwise _abuses_  this child until this child, at the age of no more than twelve, runs away.

But he _intended_  from the start to make the child run away, and he has further unspecified plans for this child, whom he intends to continue to watch.

This would be all well and good as a tragic backstory and a built-in villain for Mitsuki’s story, if Mitsuki’s story was a new work with no connection to any other. But this is _not_  unconnected to any other. This is a part of the Naruto universe, and Orochimaru is supposedly under constant surveillance by Yamato; what’s more, in the other Naruto Gaiden, we’re shown Naruto walking into Orochimaru’s lab and looking at a child floating in a tank (Mitsuki? another clone?). And then Naruto just leaves.

**_That_  is why I say Orochimaru ruined the Naruto ending.**

Either Naruto is so grossly incompetent that he doesn’t know what’s happening in Orochimaru’s lab, or he’s aware and he does nothing.

Either one means that Naruto is no longer a hero. He’s just a hapless cog in a broken system at best.

And a Naruto who isn’t a hero is no longer _Naruto_.

[35 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/160325395493/you-hate-snakebert-is-it-okay-that-i-steal-that) [#both of kishimoto's post-naruto one-shots are about tweens getting mindfucked](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/both-of-kishimoto%27s-post-naruto-one-shots-are-about-tweens-getting-mindfucked)[#that's as disturbing as orochimaru saying sasuke-kun](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/that%27s-as-disturbing-as-orochimaru-saying-sasuke-kun) [#hey it's an orochimaru post guess what that means](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/hey-it%27s-an-orochimaru-post-guess-what-that-means)[#if you guessed trigger warnings you win a prize and the prize is sobbing](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/if-you-guessed-trigger-warnings-you-win-a-prize-and-the-prize-is-sobbing) [#tw: child abuse](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-child-abuse)[#tw: medical abuse](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-medical-abuse) [#tw: brainwashing](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-brainwashing) [#tw: torture](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-torture) [#tw: child neglect](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-child-neglect) [#tw: gaslighting](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-gaslighting) [#anti-orochimaru](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-orochimaru)[#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#anti-boruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-boruto) [#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#naruto world is sad world](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-world-is-sad-world)[#everyone deserved better](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/everyone-deserved-better)





	39. rating how female characters are treated in ch. 700

  * Implausible problem #16372920: Tenten's weapon shop is failing because the Shinobi system is supposedly like "haha we don't need ninja" BUT literally people buy stuff like that all the time as weird collectors. Walk into any Asian themed curio shop and you're going to be confronted with a huge ass weapons market so literally now I'm just angry realizing Kishi just wants to screw over female characters and... idk I don't know where I was going with this. Have some salt to share.

Anonymous

When you think about how issue 700 is a “where are they now” issue, with characters getting 1-3 panels each, how they appear in that small space matters even more.

Let’s rate all the female character appearance in 700 based on how much they uplift or downcast the character.

**Anko** : one of the only characters whose face is bright and cheerful in 700… _but_ , she’s fat… and while I would really like to believe that making her fat isn’t meant to be making her a joke… well. We’ll give this portrayal 8 points out of 10, since at least she’s happy.  
 **Hinata** : genuinely looks happy, visiting cousin’s grave, being a good mom, 10/10  
 **Tenten:** miserable, failing business, all alone, 0/10  
 **Temari:**  lecturing her son but gets ignored by him, is serving her brothers drinks but is uninvolved in actual ninja business, pinched face, 2/10  
 **Ino:** enraged, instantly blows up into bitch fest with Karui whom she addresses with utter loathing, the men trying impotently to calm the women down 1/10  
 **Karui:**  tbh it is kinda fucking horrible that Karui treats the InoShikaCho formation so lightly. even if there is peace, there may not always be peace, and traditions like that are important to pass down. fight me, Karui. fight me right now. 1/10  
 **Kurenai:**  hanging out at home in her kimono looking older than she should (does Kishimoto have any idea how 40-50 year old women actually look? Tsunade un-henged has the same issue in the original series, Jiraiya looks fantastic but Tsunade looks like the crypt keeper), looking confused as her daughter dashes off to Actually Ninja, 6/10  
 **Tsunade:** let the bitch fest commence! actually Tsunade is probably fine with this as long as there is an open bar. 10/10  
 **Terumi Mei** : one-dimensional character is one-dimensional. oh boo hoo hoo I’m a drop dead gorgeous kunoichi with two kekkei genkai but no body wants to date me boo hoo hoo WTF. in what possible universe would this woman have trouble finding a man. 0/10  
 **Moegi:**

Ga-chk indeed. At least she’s basically doing some kind of ninja thing here though. 8/10  
 **Sakura:** Woo boy. She’s shown dusting, complete with kerchief and apron.

Ok. let me get this straight. I’m a housewife, ok? Far be it from me to say that housewives are stupid, lame, useless, whatever. They/we are not. And housework and “low skill” cleaning is unfairly devalued, especially coded feminine tasks. But even I, who is comfortable in my identification as a feminist housewife, would not want to be depicted in a “where are they now” montage fucking _dusting._

And Sakura is, at least supposedly, _not_  just a housewife. She has really specific, important, _rare_ skills regarding healing. It would make more sense for her to hire someone to do household chores (at a living wage!) so that she could spend more time _keeping people from fucking dying._ And then spend her well-earned off-time kicking back with a drink with an umbrella in it.

But it really comes down to this.

Did Kishimoto draw Naruto mowing the lawn? Did he draw Sasuke washing his clothes in a stream? No, he didn’t, did he?

Ok? THAT’S THE FUCKING DIFFERENCE, OK? DO YOU WONDER WHY?

## 0/100

**Kurotsuchi:**  literally the only female in the room during the kage conference. She gets a 10/10 but we’ve gone from two female kages and three female bodyguards as of the fourth war, to one female kage and no female bodyguards. so that’s 10/50.

## Final score: BOO YOU FAIL

[452 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/160387723703/implausible-problem-16372920-tentens-weapon) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#kunoichi](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/kunoichi) [#sexism](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/sexism) [#everyone deserved better](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/everyone-deserved-better) [#fight me](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/fight-me)[#i'm detecting a pattern here](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i%27m-detecting-a-pattern-here) [#and if you're about to say but it's a shonen](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/and-if-you%27re-about-to-say-but-it%27s-a-shonen) [#that only makes it worse](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/that-only-makes-it-worse)[#if there's any group i don't want uncritically swallowing sexism as happy ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/if-there%27s-any-group-i-don%27t-want-uncritically-swallowing-sexism-as-happy-ending) [#it's teenage boys](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/it%27s-teenage-boys) [#ffs](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/ffs)[#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#pass the salt](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/pass-the-salt) [#salt is delicious](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/salt-is-delicious)




 


	40. Pet Peeve Bingo!

  * same anon about "triggers you the most" question I apologize for my wording and using the term lightly. But back to the main topic what sets you off in naruto plus the ending? Things that make you go into an incoherent rant because of how much it pisses you off. I know orochimaru is one.

Anonymous

Not a problem. :)

Well for my greatest hits, it’s gotta be my [pet peeve bingo](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/157849108583/meliss-cake-fineillsignup-i-was-worried-that):

But for one single overarching thing, it’s gotta be, why did Kishimoto right from the beginning and continuously all the way to the end bring up societal reform if he didn’t want to make good on it?

It’s like… YOU BROUGHT IT UP! If you just wanted to make this show about how lil Naruto was sad, because nobody liked him for something he wasn’t responsible for and couldn’t change, and he had a friend who ran away; but then he got strong because of that thing, and everybody liked him, and he beat his friend into submission–that could have been done WITHOUT having people talk every volume about the fundamental injustice of the shinobi system and how it needed to be changed. It could have been done WITHOUT making “I have a coherent, but insane and immoral, idea of how to reform the shinobi system” the raison d’etre of almost all the antagonists.

You don’t have to have political/societal reform as a plot point–Dragon Ball and many other shonen do just fine without it–but if you make it a plot point and bang the drum and shine the spotlight on it as much as Naruto does, DELIVER.

[37 notes, 1 year ago](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/post/160491819828/same-anon-about-triggers-you-the-most-question-i) [#anti-shinobi system](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-shinobi-system) [#anti-naruto ending](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-naruto-ending) [#you brought it up](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/you-brought-it-up)[#you brought this on yourself](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/you-brought-this-on-yourself) [#naruto analysis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto-analysis) [#lazy writing](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/lazy-writing) [#sequelitis](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/sequelitis) [#bingo!](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/bingo%21)[#i should have a tag for asks](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/i-should-have-a-tag-for-asks) [#naruto](https://fineillsignup.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto)





	41. some thoughts on the Beauty and the Beast myth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mirrored in a hurry because Tumblr flagged this one and will not let me appeal the flag, what the fuck

Before I get to my point, I’d just like to say that myths are like onions and/or ogres: they have layers. The surface layer isn’t less true, less important, worse, etc, than alternative or subtextual interpretations. I’m not anti-BatB in its many incarnations, including the Disney versions; I don’t think children need to be shielded from them, in fact quite the opposite.

Also, why the heck am I posting this on my Naruto blog? Because I’m writing a Beauty and the Beast AU fanfic and I have Thoughts.

Okay, moving on.

A lot of classic European (and elsewhere, but here we’re dealing specifically with Europe) folklore is the domain of women; women telling stories to children. Stories that come out of a common cultural understanding of roles; stories that express suffering and humour, console and admonish, offer hope and warning.

One common thread among many of these stories can be interpreted as an arranged marriage allegory, and Beauty and the Beast falls squarely into this.

The paterfamilias forces the daughter into the permanent keeping of a stranger. Within the context of the classic story, the father is absolutely absolved of even the slightest criticism for this decision. The daughter would not even imagine blaming him for her predicament; it is usually presented as her choosing the stranger to save his life, for which choice she is lauded.

The stranger is monstrous, bestial, primal, frightening, full of inexplicable anger. However, by remaining true to herself and virtuous, the beauty eventually tames the beast’s behaviour, ending with his transformation into a handsome man, and happy ever after.

Before the happy ending, there is usually one or two turning points: beauty being rescued from peril by the beast; and beauty being lured to abandon the beast by false affection from female friends/sisters who are motivated by jealousy of the beast’s material wealth, whereupon she returns to the beast just in time to save him from languishing to death.

It’s not difficult to see the parallels between the BATB story and the potential experience of a relatively sheltered young woman who has a marriage to a stranger  The moral of the story, through this lens, counsels patience and perseverance to a young woman facing a sudden leaving of everything she knows, being thrust into a totally different environment with a man whose expectations and behaviours may at first seem monstrous. A happy ending, the story promises, is possible.

But _is_ the beauty’s father so blameless, so deserving of love and respect? Is the beast’s monstrousness so harmless? What is this wealth and this ugliness and this beauty? And what about the beauty? Might she have her own beast within?

I find myself drawn to the legend and wanting to dissect it, which is also to dissect myself, and to want to do so via the means of fanfiction, specifically Kakuzu and Hinata.

Kakuzu is a perfect beast.

For one thing, holy shit do I have a lot of feelings about Hiashi, who receives a similar “this is fine, we’re all fine here, how are you?” treatment in Bor//uto, ignoring entirely his abusive paterfamilias role in original Naruto.

If you want to know if Hiashi is going to get a karmic justice death in my story, well the answer to that one is HELL YES my friend.

Tags: [#subscribe to read about hiashi getting literally ripped to shreds](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/subscribe-to-read-about-hiashi-getting-literally-ripped-to-shreds)[#tumblr mobile gimme back my gifs](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/tumblr-mobile-gimme-back-my-gifs)[#beauty and the beast au](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/beauty-and-the-beast-au)[#dark fic](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/dark-fic)[#writing problematic fiction 2kforever](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/writing-problematic-fiction-2kforever)[#kakuhina](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/kakuhina)[#is that a thing?](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/is-that-a-thing%3F)[#it is now](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/it-is-now)[#anti-Boruto](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/anti-Boruto)[#my fanfic](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/my-fanfic)[#deep thoughts with fineillsignup](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/deep-thoughts-with-fineillsignup)[#fairy tale au](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/fairy-tale-au)[#teratophilia](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/teratophilia)[#when you stare into the abyss...](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/when-you-stare-into-the-abyss...)[#naruto](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/naruto)[#hinata](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/hinata)[#kakuzu](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/kakuzu)[#why is kakuzu so hot](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/why-is-kakuzu-so-hot)[#stupid sexy kakuzu](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/stupid-sexy-kakuzu)[#grumpy old murder man i don't understand myself](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/grumpy-old-murder-man-i-don%27t-understand-myself)[#too many tags](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/too-many-tags)[#like way too many](https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/like-way-too-many)


	42. headcanon: Obito hated everyone in Akatsuki

The following was originally written as a commentary on a reblog of someone else's humorous post. That person, at a later point, asked me not to interact because of my shipping KakaSaku, so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ I present it out of context here, since I deleted my original reblog.

* * *

 

A lot of Obito’s actions only make sense to me within the context of my headcanon where he deliberately chose people he hates to be his pawns and regards them suffering or even getting killed with about as much relish as he does them actually accomplishing their assigned task, thereby making mission failure a mission success...

My scale of how much I think Obito hated his pawns:

Loathed: Deidara, Hidan, Sasori, Orochimaru, Suigetsu, Itachi, Sasuke

Strongly Disliked: Kakuzu, Konan, Nagato, Juugo, Karin

Neutral: Kisame (Obito to Kisame: you’re the only bitch around here I ever respected)

Sasuke specifically he hated for being (in Obito’s view of the world) unforgivably clan-centric. I know that Obito doesn’t try to bring Sasuke around to the right way of thinking, but that’s because Obito was convinced that persuasion in itself was useless; Obito has zero real interest in canon in converting people to the idea of what “the big problem” is, much less that the Eye of the Moon is the right solution to the problem. (I know he sometimes makes attempts at persuasion but I think they can all be better categorized as feints, attempts to divide or demoralize, etc, rather than sincere attempts to gain allies.)

I think this aspect of (my interpretation of) canon Obito is a nice villain flaw in some sense, in that it provides a real vulnerability. Canon mostly ruined it by giving Obito via Kabuto his army of Edo Tensei stooges so that Obito conveniently didn’t have to actually convince anyone to fight for him.


End file.
